


Smoke Signals

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Scott McCall, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen, Hunter Allison, Hunter Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Magical Lydia Martin, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Allison hunt monsters. It's their job, and they're good at it. But it quickly becomes clear that Beacon Hills is no ordinary gig, from the string of brutal killings to the mysterious disappearances and memory loss which surround them. There's something happening in this town that neither of them are prepared for, and that they can't hope to face alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bad times today

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, readers! This work is no longer going to be updated, and will remain unfinished. Just a heads up to any who start reading now.

Allison likes to dress well. It’s a stupid comfort thing. She gets a lot of shit about it from Stiles, but it helps her pretend that she’s a normal human being every once in a while. Which, granted, is pretty much a lost cause. But sometimes it’s nice to know she’s got everyone else fooled. When she looks in a mirror, she prefers her first thought to be “Damn, I look good.” Unfortunately more often than not, her first thought is “Damn, I will never get all of this blood out of my sweater.”

Take now, for instance. Their last hunt ended just a few hours ago, and it had been a particularly messy one (you’d think monsters would have the common courtesy to die without jettison their entrails everywhere, but then again, that’s life). It’s two thirty now, and sleep is not happening; her two handguns are oiled and shined inside and out, her selection of hidden knives ground sharp and wicked with nerves. She’s tempted to go out and retrieve some of the other weaponry from the hidden panel in the back of the Jeep, but somehow carrying back an arsenal fit for a small army into the hotel room seems like the kind of high profile activity they’re supposed to be avoiding. So, she settles for carrying the latest load of gooey clothing to the bathroom and scrubbing for all it’s worth.

There’s something both cathartic and frustrating about trying to get harpy gunk out of cashmere. Stiles has avoided that ordeal entirely, sticking with the longstanding hunter tradition of plaid—as well as the longstanding Stilinski tradition of not giving a shit what kind of goop was splattered all over his clothes. It made for some very interesting reactions at restaurants. Good thing they mostly ate at 24 hour diners in the unholy hours of the night.

“If we keep taking on hunts at this pace, I’ll run out of clean clothes in a week,” Allison mutters. It had scarcely been five hours since they dispatched the harpy nest and got back on the road. They had just gotten back to their previous motel room and flopped down to watch some TV when the kind of news report came on that no self-respecting hunter could ignore. The kind with lots of death and mayhem where the reporter said "strange occurances" at least twice. The kind that apparently couldn't wait until morning.

So here they are, crashing in a motel on the edge of what appears-to-be-yet-probably-is-not an idyllic little town, and waiting for the sun to rise so they can get down to business. Stiles, as usual, is plugging away at the keys on his computer, his face dancing its way through a series of ridiculous expressions that he refers to as his “thinky face”. Allison always tells him that she’s going to photograph it and make it his profile picture. Stiles always reminds her that it’s best not to get into a computer hacking contest with a certified computer hacker.

From the excited leap of his eyes and frenzied clicking noises from the keys that she catches through the doorway, he’s on to something good. That, or he’s looking at porn again. Allison decides it’s best not to ask.

“Have you checked the local news reports?” she calls out over the sputter of the tap. He shoots her a scathing look.

“What a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that an hour and a half ago? Oh wait, I totally did.”

“You going to be a sarcastic little shit for the rest of the night, or are you going to tell me what we’re dealing with?” She grins at him from the bathroom door. Arguing with Stiles has been one of life’s little constants ever since the two of them set out together at the end of what would have been their sophomore year in high school. That had been two years ago now. Some part of Allison wishes she could have been there for Graduation.  A very, very small part.

“It’s weird,” Stiles says, slapping his face lightly like it will loosen the ideas in his skull. “I mean, weirder than the weird shit we normally have to deal with. I would normally just say werewolf, hands down, no questions asked except where and how we kill it. A couple years back there were a few attacks, nothing fatal or anything, but they all screamed werewolf-y in a totally metaphorical way. The screaming, I mean. There was no actual screaming. Well I mean there probably was, but that’s not important. What I’m trying to say is, the majority were clustered around the full moon and chalked up to animal attacks.

 “Those stopped after a few months,” he continues, “then just recently a new set of attacks started up with a totally different MO. People ripped to shreds, and seemingly at random times. That time also marked the beginning of some weird disappearances, people vanishing with no signs of a struggle, kettle still on the stove—the whole deal. On top of all of that, sometimes people involved with those cases end up suffering from amnesia or dementia. I’m no expert, although I’m damn close to being one, but last I checked werewolves weren’t really big with the deneuralizing.” Stiles sits back in his chair and rubs his palms on his knees. “Bottom line: we have so-called animal attacks happening all month long, all wrapped up in an excerpt from the Twilight Zone.”

Allison picks at a glob of something green and sticky with one of her fingernails. “What are we thinking, then? Werewolves plus some kind of weird mojo? Or some new beastie?”

“Working on it,” Stiles says, his voice already distant as he dives back into his research. Allison has to admit that although she’d had her reservations about taking on Stiles as a partner at first, he’s proved pretty much invaluable behind the frontlines. Although plenty of hunters work jobs in pairs, she finds that knowing exactly what she’s getting into and how to kick its ass is infinitely better than having some dumb shmuck with a gun to back her up.

The water in the sink has turned a charming greenish color, and the stains branches out across the fabric of her sweater into some sort of Rorschach blot. She squints and turns her head. All she sees is a blob. With a snort of disgust she tosses the ruined clothing into the wastebasket and stomps back into the bedroom proper. She has to admit, although she’d felt a slight twinge of guilt when Stiles introduced her to the system of fake credit cards they’d been living off of for the past two years, the guilt is significantly outweighed by all the shit they can buy. They prefer to think of it not as shoplifting, but as work compensation. Allison doubts Stiles’s father would approve, being a sheriff and all. Hunter or no, he plays by the rules. She suspects that was part of the reason Stiles had skipped town with her.

Flopping down on her bed, she gropes at the lamp on the nightstand and fumbles the room into darkness. Stiles doesn’t seem to notice. The light from his laptop makes his already pale face glow like a second moon. Allison punches her pillow into shape, sliding a hand underneath it to brush against the familiar cold edge of her gun. She smiles. Got her gun, got her nerd, got a job that promises the kind of adrenaline rush she finds herself living for these days.

Off to a good start.

 

 

 

Stiles hates werewolves. They’re fast and dangerous and hard to kill, but on top of that they’re people, and a lot of times they’re people that don’t even know about their exciting nightly lifestyle. Not to mention the slobber. Try getting that out of denim. Stiles has never bothered.

The first thing he does when they get to the hotel is lay down lines of salt across the doors and windows, then circle the room’s perimeter in mountain ash. He dusts the door handle with silver powder, and hangs a sprig of wolfsbane just over the threshold. Until he is positive which breed they’re dealing with here, he is taking zero chances. Normally he would have put some wards around the Jeep as well, but he didn’t want to draw any excess attention to them by dumping a bunch of black shit on the hood of his car. That was before he opened up good ole’ Google and plunged into his research. A few hours into that, and he doesn’t feel safe enough to step out of the hotel room.

He checks the time: 4am. Allison will be up at the crack of dawn as usual, so there isn’t much point in sleeping. Plenty of time to sleep when they’re dead, which could easily be sooner rather than later if he’s not thorough with his research. He knows that Allison comes from an old family that had somehow managed to live a fairly functional life on top of specializing in werewolf hunting, but they are the exception. And while Stiles is perfectly happy to hitch a ride on the good vibes fate seems to give the Argents, he’d rather not risk getting bumped off the wagon because he overlooked a link that originally just looked like some kind of weird werewolf fanfiction. Pro tip, usually it is just weird werewolf fanfiction. But you never know for sure until you were halfway through a paragraph of poorly written and logistically unsound werewolf sex. Stiles is pretty sure he’s practically a _connoisseur_ of supernatural soft-core porn. Now there’s the kind of marketable skill you can put on a job application.

He sighs and closes his laptop halfway, his hands fluttering around his face anxiously to smooth back his hair or drag over his mouth. None of the victims had been missing their hearts, at least any more than they were missing the majority of their other insides. But it is hard to look at the lunar charts and argue that this brand of fun is anything _but_ the lycanthrope variety. There are enough different breeds out there to make any one sure way of killing them wishful thinking, but a combination of silver bullets, wolfsbane powder, and chopping the bodies into little tiny pieces has proved popular recipe in the past.

He gets up and starts pacing, rolling onto the balls of his feet to avoid waking Allison up. The girl’s a light sleeper, probably because she’s always expecting some evil face-sucking demon to try and murder her in her bed. Which hey, to be fair, that did happen once. So good on her.

There’s a lot about this case that doesn’t add up. The change in attack patterns, the collective mind-melt the town seems to be experiencing—neither Stiles nor the internet can seem to figure out how they all fit together, and when the internet fails you know it’s bad.

He feels like the data is trying to tell him something, a nagging at the back of his mind that he can’t bring into focus. Not like that’s unusual. A combination of sleep deprivation and a short attention span makes his life a clusterfuck of scrambled thoughts. Allison refers to it as his thought processes “taking the scenic route”. He appreciates her optimism, misplaced or no. He knows that if he had been in her place, he’d have smothered himself with a pillow two weeks after teaming up.

With a quiet sigh, Stiles sits down again and opens his laptop. Walking in circles won’t help him stop thinking in them. He’ll keep plugging away at the research because that’s what he does, and he’ll figure out what the hell is going on in Beacon Hills and everything will be great. He’ll make sure of it.

 

 

 

Allison is jolted out of sleep by her phone’s tinny rendition of “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, her fingers tensing habitually around the metal of her gun. Stiles had set it to her ringtone as a joke, and then Allison never got around to changing it.

She staggers out of bed and fumbles in her bag, pawing past the six other disposables she and Stiles share for their work-related calls until her hand closes around the glowing plastic screen of her personal cell. One look at the name makes her eyes widen.

Stiles is still at his laptop, but now he’s face-down on the keyboard and undoubtedly getting drool all over the touchpad. She shoves her phone under her shirt to try and dampen the noise, briefly considers stepping outside for some privacy, before thinking the better of crossing the warding lines and shutting herself in the bathroom.

“And how’s my favorite niece this morning?” Kate says, her voice full of the kind of swagger and confidence that Allison has always tried to emulate.

“Well I was aiming for well-rested, but apparently you had other ideas,” Allison replies, the edge of a grin in her voice.

“Ah, it’s getting late anyways. Can’t have you going soft all out there on your own.”

“Kate, it’s five in the morning. And I’m not on my own, I’m with Stiles.”

“Mmm, I remember,” Kate says appreciatively. “Hope you two aren’t doing anything I wouldn’t do in the haze of post-battle adrenaline. Then again, that doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Was there a reason you called, other than having some kind of weirdly sexual conversation about my partner?” Allison asks.

 “Well now that you mention it, there was,” she says, her voice going slightly distant like she’s cradling the phone awkwardly on her shoulder, and on the other end of the line Allison hears what sounds like the clink of metal and the buzz of a zipper. “I heard about the nest of vamps you took down in Silver Springs. That was some solid work. And now a little birdie tells me that you and buzz-cut are setting out for Beacon Hills. Want to give me the skinny on that?”

“Yeah, we’re there now,” Allison says, uncertainty bubbling up in her chest. It isn’t normal for Kate to be calling about hunts unless there’s something wrong. The last Allison heard of her had been back in Oakland, where they teamed up to burn down a warehouse full of banshees, and nearly took down half the block with it. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. I did a job in that area, oh, back when I was a little older than you. Just want to make sure that I don’t need to tie up a few loose ends. What are you guys liking for the baddie?”

 “We’re still looking into it,” Allison replies.

“Okay, good, but do you have any ideas? Feel free to bounce them off me.”

“We’re thinking werewolf,” Allison says, suspicion tapping at the back of her brain. “But whatever it is, it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

“Aw baby, what’s wrong? Don’t you want to see your ole’ Auntie?”

Allison shook her head to herself, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “No, it’s not that at all. I guess I’ve just needed a lot of space since I left. You know how it is.”

“No problem hon. I was just checking in. Glad to hear that you and the Mister are doing okay. Hey, you’ll let me know what it turns out to be, right?” Kate’s voice is weirdly insistent.

“Yeah, sure,” Allison says, a frown deepening on her face. “When I know, you know.”

“There’s my girl. Be sure to kill it extra dead for me, ‘kay? Love ya!” The line goes dead with a click.

When she steps back into the room again, Stiles is upright (for a generous definition of upright), and rubbing his face back into wakefulness.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Allison says, tossing the phone on her bed and fishing some fresh clothes out of the duffel bag.

“You didn’t,” he lies with a wan smile her way. It’s good to see him getting any sleep at all; far too often she falls asleep to the sight of him awake at his computer, and then rise to his eyes ringed in dark circles and a hoard of paper coffee cups around him. Exhaustion never seems to slow him down, though. It just breeds even more nervous energy, making his eyes light up in a way that strangers might call a sparkle but Allison calls a gleam. Sparkle implies harmlessness. Stiles is anything but harmless, though he does his best to appear otherwise.

Allison dresses quickly, sliding into clothes while Stiles mutters under his breath at the computer. She’s past feeling self-conscious in front of him; they did the whole sexual tension thing for a while, even made out a couple of times, but it had been weird and they both started laughing and after that things in that department were comfortably PG.

“Did I hear you right, just now?” he asks as she pulls on a jacket. “Are we now taking personal phone calls from Buffy’s psychotic twin?”

“Apparently,” Allison replies, that knot of tension in her stomach writhing in on itself. There was a time when she found Stiles’ pop culture references baffling and obnoxious. Now she slips into the language as easy as breathing. “She was asking all these questions, wanting to know what it is we’re hunting. Says she’s been in the area before.”

Stiles frowns. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but has Kate ever called you unless something sticky ’s going down?”

“Only if she wants something.” Allison sits down on the bed and pinches the bridge of her nose, massaging her eyes with the heels of her hands like it will somehow knead the truth from her brain. “Kate complicates things wherever she goes. Her taking an interest in something is almost never a good sign.”

The bed creaks and slumps as Stiles sits down next to her, his hands folded loosely in his lap. “If we were in danger, I’m sure she’d tell us,” he says quietly. “As questionable as her methods may be, you can be sure she wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Allison says, offering him a quiet smile. “For all I know this is a ploy to knock you off and send me crying back home. You know my family thinks you stole me away from them.”

“Oh, that is so unfair,” Stiles grumbles. “You’re the one who swept me off my feet and carried me into the metaphorical sunset.”

“That is so not true!” Allison cries. “I hit town and saved you from that stupid ghoul, and you followed me out of town like a lost puppy.”

“I _am_ fluffy and adorable,” Stiles says wryly. He glances over at her. “Try not to worry about Kate; it’s not likely to do you any favors if shit does hit the fan.”

Allison smiles. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

“Attagirl. As for the case, good news first, or bad?”

“Give me the bad,” Allison says.

“Always the pessimist. So I was going through the police records and I found something weird: not only does there seem to be no connection between any of the victims, but they’ve also left no close family members or friends behind. They either picked up and moved shortly after, or went missing with no leads. And that’s the lucky ones. The not-lucky ones got filleted as well.”

“Meaning we have zero people to interview for leads,” Allison concludes with a sigh. Of course this wouldn’t be an easy one. “Alright, what’s the good news?”

“The good news is, we have a lead,” Stiles says with a grin. “The guy’s name is Deaton. He’s a local veterinarian around here that they brought on as a consultant in the so-called animal attacks, so he’s seen most of them first hand and could give us some valuable intel.” He leans back, the smile retreating slightly. “There’s something else, too. I was doing some digging, as I’m wont to do, and I found something else. So far none of the attacks have left any survivors—except that one did. The report was changed later on to erase any evidence of it. Which is technically impossible, because police reports aren’t really subject to editing. Not only that, but I called the station and had them check the paper records—those had been changed too.”

Allison frowns. “Like erased and rewritten?”

“Like they had been written that way in the first place,” Stiles says.

Allison stands up. “Well, that’s weird enough for me. Do we have a name?”

Stiles blinks. “Allison, that information was deleted. Scrubbed clean. Presto change-o. It would take some kind of genius mastermind to bring it back.”

Allison patiently waits for him to finish. “So who is it?”

He grins. “Lydia Martin. Senior at the resident high school.”

Allison stands up and nods, zipping up her jacket with a businesslike tug and cocking her shotgun. “Alright. So the vet and the kid. Let’s do it.”

Stiles grins. “Ooo, you know I love it when you do that badass thing.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Nerd.”

“Douche.”

 

 

 

The air from the Jeep’s open window tangles in Allison’s hair as she weaves her hand through the slipstream. Stiles had insisted on driving this time, which Allison briefly contested on the basis that he was running on so little sleep that he could be considered legally drunk. Stiles proved his lucidity by rattling off every third element on the periodic table while standing on one leg and touching his fingers to his nose. Allison wasn’t entirely sure that counted as the behavior of someone fully in control of his mental and physical faculties, but he put on so much effort that she let it slide.

From what she sees whipping past her window, Beacon Hills looks normal enough. The smooth, well-maintained roads wind through your typical suburbs before depositing the Jeep in the center of town, which contains lots of mom ‘n pop stores and the local high school. What stands out is the people, or rather the lack thereof. For such a nice day there's hardly anyone out enjoying the sunshine. The few people they do pass by walk quickly and with purpose, or shoot them suspicious glances until they pull out of sight. It feels like the town is waiting for something. Maybe it's waiting for them.

They pull up to the curb and then slightly over it on a quiet street straddling the edge of the town proper. Stiles gestures to a little brick building down the block. Hoisting a pair of binoculars, Allison reads the words “Beacon Hills Animal Clinic” written on the sign.

“Am I the only one who sees the irony in looking for werewolves at an animal clinic?” Stiles asks.

“Nope,” Allison says, tucking a handgun into the back of her pants where it’s hidden by her jacket. She prefers a bow, but they’re not exactly practical to conceal. It’s unlikely that this will pan out to be anything more dangerous than a few sick dogs, but she’s not taking any chances.

 “One of us should go in alone,” she says. “Less suspicious that way.” Her hands produce a quarter from the pocket of her jeans. “Heads or tails?” 

“Do you have to ask?” Stiles says. “The high school’s just a couple blocks back, where we should find our Lydia Martin. Loser hits Jump Street.”

“Sounds like a plan.” The coin flashes, and she snatches it out of the air and slaps it expertly on the back of her wrist. Heads. Of course.

“God damn it,” Stiles growls.

“You really should consider changing your strategy,” Allison says with a grin, drawing various other small weapons from their hiding places around the jeep and concealing them on her person. “The last time you won a coin toss was way back in Los Almos.”

“A coin flip doesn’t _need_ a strategy, there’s a fifty-fifty chance either way! It doesn’t even make sense!” Stiles cries. “I can’t betray Tails now. I’m invested.” He reaches over to dig a pocket knife out of the glove compartment, followed by a second larger hunting knife.

“Aren’t you taking your gun?” Allison asks.

“Bringing a gun into a public school hardly seems like a good way of flying under the radar,” Stiles says, pulling out a small bag of rocksalt and a silver amulet. They all disappear into pockets or pouches until he’s left looking slightly less like a serial killer. “What’s your cover story going to be, then?”

“Well, this is an animal clinic, right?” Allison says, popping open the glove compartment and digging for a slingshot and a rubber ball (a joke gift from Stiles last Christmas which ended up being a lot more useful than he might have expected whenever he started mouthing off). She points it out the window, aims, and releases. A split-second later a squirrel falls out of a tree, stunned, and lands with a surprised squeak.

“Wow, alright, that’s, that’s one way of doing it,” Stiles says. Allison hops out of the car with a too-sweet smile, the slingshot back in its hiding place.

“I might be a while,” she says, leaning on the frame of the Jeep. “Have fun wading through that tide of teenage hormones.” She glances at the back seat. “Oh, hey,” she grins evilly, fishing something out to toss it to him. “Don’t forget your backpack. Gotta blend in, after all.”

“Tails, I will never forgive you this betrayal,” Stiles groans, struggling out of his seatbelt with the pack slung over his shoulder. Allison rolls her eyes at him and trudges off, grabbing the squirrel by the scruff of its neck and setting off towards the clinic. The squirrel struggles feebly, but the little bastard will be fine. She shoots a glance after Stiles’s retreating back. Her other little bastard, however, she’s a bit less certain about.

 

 

 

Breaking into the school is depressingly easy. Stiles had almost hoped it would be one of those high security deals with metal detectors and cops and ten-foot fences, the works. At least then he’d get a moderate challenge out of the deal. Instead he walks through the front door and no one bats an eye. 

The hallways swarm with activity when Stiles steps inside; must be between classes. Just his luck. He has a picture and a name to help locate their witness, but little else. From the sounds of it though, this Lydia is quite the popular one around here. According to her file she’s a straight A student and winner of almost every kind of contest the school could come up with. So clearly someone should know who and where she is. Looking for someone who looks old enough to help and dumb enough not to think twice about it, he spots a suitably vacant jock lounging against the wall down the hall. His hair is gelled up into the traditional “douche” position, and his jaw looks like it could be put on the front of a ship to break through ice floes in Antarctica. As good a bet as any.

“Hey man,” he says easily, sliding up beside him. “I’m looking for Lydia Martin. She around here somewhere?” Aforementioned jock gives him the once-over and doesn’t seem to like what he sees. He frowns and crosses his muscular arms over an even more muscular chest. Once Stiles might have found that intimidating, but that was before he’d stabbed a wendigo through the heart with a letter opener. Schoolboys don’t scare him anymore.

“You new here?” the guy asks. Clearly he’d rather not be having this conversation, and hey, that makes two of them, but based on the jealous scowl plastered all over his face he knows who Stiles is talking about. Stiles smiles in reply, making no attempt to tone down the threat factor. There’s only one language these guys speak in his experience, and years on the road had made Stiles fluent in violence.

“You could say that,” he says. “So where is she?”

“Who says I know?” the kid retorts, and Stiles is about ready to start slapping some sense into him when a slim arm loops through the jock’s bulging one.

“Something wrong, Jackson?” Lydia Martin asks, and _wow._ Stiles is instantly reminded of a Venus fly trap, beautiful and alien and just waiting for someone dumb enough to stick their face into it. Stiles is instantly ready to volunteer.

“You must be Lydia,” he says, in a voice that tries to come out smooth but trips over itself somewhere in the middle and summersaults into nervousness. She tilts her head and smiles.

“That’s me,” she says with false cheerfulness. “You must be the guy standing in the way of my locker.” Stiles glances to the side and for the first time notices a paper nametag ringed with flowers on the locker he’s currently leaning against, with Lydia’s name written in the center in flowing cursive. Of course she would have perfect handwriting. Everything about her is probably perfect.

Stiles frowns. Where had that thought come from? He jabs at his temples with the tips of his fingers, feeling the hint of some phantom itch in his brain. But suddenly everything is too fuzzy to place.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, shuffling away from the condescending smile she shoots after him. She opens her locker and starts shuffling stuff around, and for the life of him Stiles can’t remember what his cover story was going to be. Was he a journalist? Animal control liaison? Booty inspector?

“I was wondering what you could tell me about your attack three years ago,” he blurts. So apparently his cover story is that he’s a big-mouthed jerk. Excellent. Strangely enough, Lydia doesn’t blink or even falter. She just smiles quietly to herself, in an I-know-something-you-don’t-know kind of way. Stiles recognizes it because he wears it all the time himself.

“Who is it that wants to know?” she asks, turning to look at him dead on, and something inside of him stalls.

“I’m Stiles,” he says, the endless list of fake names bursting into flames behind his eyes. “I don’t actually go here, I just needed to ask you some questions.” What’s going on? Why is he saying these things? He can’t seem to stop. “Oh, and I also hunt ghosts, monsters and demons for a living. Not really a living because we don’t get paid, so we just steal stuff instead. We meaning my partner and I. Her name is Allison, she’s really cool and good at archery.” By the end of his little spiel Stiles’s eyes are nearly bulging out of his skull. He’s dreaming. It’s the only logical explanation. This job must have been so terribly awfully boring that he fell asleep, and is currently having a nightmare about botching it up so horribly.

“Ha ha ha,” he says, a little too loudly and way too desperately. “Just kidding with you! Making a joke. So funny, right?” Because nothing says honesty like the sound of frenzied backpedalling. And Lydia is still wearing that infuriating, strangely arousing smile.

“Hello Stiles,” she says, sweet as nightshade. “Thanks for sharing. As for that night, I have nothing to say that the public police records can’t say better. Now if you don’t mind, I have a Chemistry test to ace.” And with that she’s walking away, towing along the angry jock who glares over his shoulder at Stiles until he’s swallowed up by the crowd.

Stiles is too horrified to go after them. He just told a couple of random high-schoolers that he was a hunter, not to mention giving them both his name and Allison’s. He’s never told anyone not already in the life what he does. Ever. Just throwing it out there for a couple of strangers to examine makes him feel violated. It’s as if he couldn’t stop himself, like she reached straight into his skull and started rearranging the furniture. He closes his eyes and presses his head to the locker. Something under his forehead crinkles, and his brain clicks. Eyes flying open, he looks at the ring of tiny purple flowers adorning Lydia’s locker. To be sure, he leans forward and takes a deep whiff.

Wolfsbane.

Well now. That had to be a clue.

 

 

 

When the door opens, Allison is in tears. She cradles the squirrel in her arms, trying to look protective while at the same time ensuring it doesn’t sink its sharp little teeth into her hand. She’s never understood how people can find them cute. They’re just furry, nut-eating rabies containers. This one also smells like pee. She can’t wait until she looks old enough pose as a cop without arousing suspicion. Her father has a shiny fake badge with her fake name on it, just waiting for the day her face catches up to where her mind needs it to be.

The man in front of her is fairly unimposing at first glance: average height, average build, bald. There’s something sharp in his eyes underneath the practiced concern of a doctor, though. Something that looks at Allison and starts picking her apart.

“I—my brother, he was playing with a slingshot, and I _told him not to_ , I did, but…” She holds out the squirrel miserably, which gives a forlorn mewl. Kate was the one who taught her how to fake-cry. Amazing how all that blubbering and snot makes people so eager to tell you things. Deaton’s face softens, but his eyes remain calculating.

“I think you’d better come inside,” he says, stepping back to let her enter. She nods and cracks a teary smile, passing over the threshold.

The clinic is small and homey, and Deaton quickly guides her into the back. He gets a syringe full of something medical-looking and gets her to hold the squirrel still long enough to sedate it. It goes limp in her arms, and she spends a while pretending to coo over how cute it is before setting it on the table. The doctor goes right to work gently pressing his fingers to the bones, his eyes intent on their work. Allison uses the opportunity for a quick look around the place.

She trails her fingers over the bottles idly, skimming the labels and committing as many as she can to memory. All of them seem fairly ordinary, but she’s also not an expert on veterinary medicine.

“Thank you so much for taking care of the little guy,” she says, turning to gesture towards the mangy patch of fur on the table. Deaton nods.

“He’ll be fine; he’s just stunned. What did you say your name was again?” he asks. They both know she hadn’t.

“Oh, I’m Jaime,” she says, with a smile meant to charm.

“Well Jaime, it’s nice to meet you. Although maybe not under such grisly circumstances.” Deaton says, and she laughs slightly. “I’ve lived here for years, and treated many patients, but I can’t say I’ve seen or heard of you. Do you go to the high school here?”

“Yeah, my family doesn’t have any pets,” she says, thinking of the hundred pounds of fur muscle, and slobber waiting for her back at home. She hadn’t seen Peaches since she’d first left home.

“That’s a shame. Animals can bring a lot of joy into a household.” And that’s her chance.

“Well, I don’t know,” she says with a shaky laugh. “Seems like lately the animal kingdom is feeling a little less than friendly around here.” Deaton smiles slightly, but she doesn’t miss the tension knotting in his shoulders. Could be nothing. Could be guilt. She leans on the counter and hugs her arms across her chest. “I’ve seen the news. You talked to the police about it, right? What kind of animal could do that kind of thing?”

“The news agencies have reported it as a mountain lion,” Deaton replies. “I’m inclined to agree with them.”

“But why?” Allison asks. “Why would it do something like that? I mean, all animals are so sweet normally.” That’s overdoing it a bit, she can tell. But Deaton doesn’t comment on it, merely shaking his head and wrapping up the squirrel’s bound leg in medical tape.

“It’s hard to say. It could be anything from rabies to starvation. There’s no way to know for sure until they can put the poor creature down.”

“I’m sure that’s what’s best,” Allison says. Deaton picks the squirrel up and carries it into the kennel area, setting it in a cage. While the vet’s back is turned, Allison does one final scan of the room. Still nothing immediately incriminating except the vague feeling that she’s missing something. Deaton returns, wiping his hand on a cloth and smiling.

“He’ll be back to normal in no time at all. That was a lucky shot your brother got; he could have broken its neck. You be sure that he stops playing with dangerous toys. Next time he could hurt himself.” Allison swallows and nods, her eyes wide and innocent.

“Thank you, Doctor Deaton. I was so scared he was going to die.” No, no, she needs more time, some other opening to pick at for info, but he’s steering her towards the door with a firm hand. She represses a sigh of frustration and lets herself be guided out. Raising his suspicions any higher won’t do them any favors.  

She’s almost out the door when suddenly it swings open in front of her, and she’s almost colliding with the warm, solid weight that comes barreling through it. She jerks away, her hand twitching automatically for the switchblade hidden in her pocket. The guy in front of her looks to be about her age or slightly younger, his eyes lit up in surprise. He has a look on his face of pleasant confusion, like he isn’t really sure what’s going on but is going along with it anyways.

“Wow, I am so sorry,” he says, looking at her strangely. There’s something in that stare, like he’s run into an old friend that he never expected to see again, that puts her off. She turns abruptly to Deaton and gives him one final smile.

“Thanks again, Doc,” she says. “I’ll make sure my brother learns his lesson. Hopefully you won’t be seeing me again.” And then, right as she turns to leave, she sees it: a small groove in the floor, running just behind the counter and all around the room. In that groove is a line of black powder that she’d bet her hunting bow is mountain ash. Looks like Deaton isn’t as innocuous as he seems. With a cheery little wave, she steps past the stranger in the doorway. She hears him take a short intake of breath as she passes him, but then the door is slamming shut and she’s free.

Stepping out to the curb, she flips out her phone and gives Stiles a call. He answers on the first ring.

“Hey, uh, hi,” he says before Allison can say anything.

“Stiles,” she says. “I just got out of Deaton’s place. How are things on your end?”

“Oh great, great, very much fine,” he says, talking quickly. “Just, you know, doing the old research.”

Allison frowns. “What about Lydia Martin?”

“Oh, she’s fine. So fine. Not, like, in that way. What I mean is, I’ll tell you later. Hey, sidetrack; I walked down to the public library and dug up some stuff you might be interested to hear.”

Allison walks up to the jeep and leans against its side. “Hit me.”

“About nine years ago, some big house on the outside of town burned down with the family inside. Nothing outwardly supernatural about that, but then three years ago the police dug up the body of one of the surviving family members, Laura Hale, right there on the property. And you know the best part? The body was cut in half. And I guess it was too much to hope for that I would never have to say that un-ironically.”

Allison taps her fingers on the case of her phone thoughtfully. “Best lead we’ve got so far. The vet’s definitely in on it somehow, the back of his office was lined in mountain ash. But he crossed the barrier himself just fine, so he’s definitely not a werewolf.” And there was something about that guy, something weird about the way he looked at her like he knew who she was and didn’t like it—but she’s not about to bring that up to Stiles without any more hard evidence.

“No use barking up the wrong tree—and before you ask, yes, that pun was completely intended,” Stiles says.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Do you have an address for that house? I think I’ll go check it out.”

“I’ll text it to you. You want some backup?”

“It’s fine, I got it. It’s just some abandoned house. I’m betting that after this much time, the most dangerous thing up there is tetanus. You’d be better off using the time to work some of that researching magic, see what else you can dig up.”

“Oh, darn. You know I was looking forward to traipsing around a creepy burned up house full of ghosts and safety hazards. Guess I’ll just have to stay here and suffer alone with my books and high-speed internet.”

“Life is so cruel to you. I’ll check in if I have something.”

 

 

 

The drive through the back-country roads up to the remains of the Hale house takes Allison far from the town proper, with nothing around but trees and birds. She keeps the windows down, but the woods are mostly silent with the first hint of winter in the air. The press of her gun on her hip is a comforting weight.

She parks the Jeep just out of sight from the house, but not so far that she can’t get to it in a pinch. She chooses her weapons carefully: the shotgun full of rock salt goes across her back, because Stiles may have been joking about the ghost thing but she’d rather not take any chances. Dying in a horrible fire doesn’t seem like the sort of thing inclined to usher spirits into a peaceful rest, burned bones or no. Into her boots go two silver knives, the ones she’s had lots of practice burying up to the hilt on targets from ten feet away. In her hands goes her crossbow. She carries pouches of wolfsbane and silver powder on her belt, next to a gun with your run-of-the-mill lead bullets. The gun with silver wolfsbane she tucks into the back of her pants, and that one will be her last resort. If they are dealing with werewolves, she’d prefer to be careful. They’re close enough to people at times, and she’d rather not kill anyone she doesn’t absolutely have to. Especially with the code to consider. But if it comes to that, she won’t hesitate. She never has in the past.

As she slinks around the outskirts of the trees, she gets a good look at the house for the first time; on first glance it looks like the fires had only just spluttered out minutes ago. Closer inspection shows there’s some ivy growing up one of the more stable sides, and a few boards have been nailed into the wood of the front porch where someone’s foot fell through the charred wood. It has to be one of the creepiest hunting grounds so far, and that’s even including the Leftbridge Cemetery fiasco.

Allison waits in the shadow of a tree, watching for movement in the windows. It looks empty, but she’s not overly eager to go marching out into the open looking like she’s walking out of some post-apocalyptic western. But she can’t lurk in the woods forever, and so, taking a breath, she breaks into a light-footed run across the overgrown field which generously could be called the front lawn, her eyes darting around the landscape in search of movement. She makes it to the porch and crouches down there, her heart pounding. She lives for this feeling every time, the way her blood sings with a weapon in her hand and all the distractions fall away. There’s no room here for doubts or wishful thinking about where her life would have gone if she hadn’t started hunting. Clarity comes hard-earned to her.

Stepping lightly, she creeps up the stairs and plasters herself against the wall, crossbow held at the ready. The locks on the door were burned away long ago; she nudges it open with the toe of her boot and, carefully, tilts her head to peer inside. Nothing but charred wood and ash. There's a feeling that lingers in the area, the smell of smoke and ash just slightly stronger than it should be, the air just a little colder. The past seemed to be reaching out, so close to almost touching her. Her scalp prickles; she ignores it.

She searches the house quickly, freezing every time the floorboards creak under her feet. There’s a couch that looks like it was picked up off the curb, all weird stains and mildew but too fresh to be a survivor of the fire. The doorway to what seems to be the basement is boarded up with planks and nails, so nothing is getting down there. Upstairs there are a few bedrooms, all empty.

Allison’s just about to chalk this up to another dud lead, when there’s a snap of noise from behind her and Allison whirls around, her finger sliding onto the trigger of her crossbow. She’s a split second away from giving the newcomer a new orifice when she freezes; brown eyes under a jutting brow bore into hers. It’s the guy from the vet’s office.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she hisses, her mind tumbling through every possible scenario of why he would have followed her. None of them are good, but none are bad enough to warrant squeezing her right index finger. At least until he takes a step forward, and she sees the long, pale claws curving from his fingers.

Well. Definitely not human, then.

Looking him up and down, Allison can’t tell whether he’s young enough to be protected by the code or not—meaning a killing strike is not her best option if she wants to stick to the rules. But there’s nothing saying she can’t rough him up a bit. With a cold smile, she takes aim at his knee. “This may sting a bit,” she says sweetly. Wolf-boy stares her down. It’s not all that intimidating until his eyes flare up into a dull red glow.

Allison’s heart pounds. Not just a werewolf, but an alpha. And where there’s an alpha, there’s a pack.

Her finger closes over the trigger just as a weight slams into her from the side, knocking her to the ground and her weapon to the floor as its bolt buries harmlessly into the wall. Faster than thinking, she’s going for the salt gun on her back; wolves might not dissipate like a spirit would, but that wouldn’t stop it from hurting like hell. The first round goes into vet boy’s chest before he can take another step, sending him sprawling with a yell of pain. Then a pair of rough, sharp hands are digging into her arm and she’s being hauled upright, her feet scrabbling against the dirty floor.

“Hold her!” someone snarls, and she kicks in their direction. Her toe hits a shin, and the pressure releases. She dives and rolls, the world a blur of grey and black and motion before she surges to her feet, slamming her back to a wall and drawing a knife. Low, guttural sounds rumble from behind the thin and burnt-out walls, and sometimes she catches the glint of yellow eyes flashing at her through the rubble. At her best guess there are at least four of them in the house with her.

She’s liking her odds of walking out of here unharmed a lot less—or at all. She would never have tried to take on a whole pack on her own; well, at least, she would have been a lot more prepared beforehand. Kate must have known something about this, that it wasn’t just one wolf they were dealing with. It’s some small comfort to know her aunt will rip the town apart to avenge her. The second she makes a move, it’ll be over. A surge of claw and fangs, a hot splattering of pain, then darkness. She can’t imagine it will be a pleasant death. Then again, she never expected one.

 “Come on then,” she says, her voice low and furious. “Let’s do this!” The shadows coil and retract hungrily, drawing closer and closer.

 Vet boy prowls out from behind a charred doorway, his red eyes practically glowing. Allison’s hand tightens on the handle of her knife. She figures the whole “no-kill” rule is pretty much out the window at this point. Better take down as many of them as possible, give Stiles a better chance in case they go after him. She’s so grateful he hadn’t come. At least one of them has a chance.

The creature in front of her takes a step closer, watching her movements closely. She shifts the knife in her hand again, drawing his attention long enough to slip her fingers just inside a pouch on her belt. One step closer, and enough silver dust to melt his eyes explodes in his face.

Hands dart out with inhuman speed and catch her wrists as she lashes out with her dagger, a fraction too late; it clatters to the floor as she’s forced to her knees, someone’s fingers digging through her hair to jerk her head back. Vet-boy stands there stupidly, his eyelids fluttering, before reaching up to wipe it out of his eyes.

“…Did you just throw glitter on me?” he asks incredulously. Damn. Wrong breed. Should have gone with the wolfsbane.

“Party-Gram?” she winces out, grateful for the sarcasm that prolonged exposure to Stiles has helped her cultivate. To her disbelief the boy laughs, spluttering out a cloud of silvery dust.

“Who _are_ you?” he asks, eyeing the modest armory she’s left scattered across the room.

Allison smiles coldly, keenly aware of the hands still wrenching her arms behind her back. “Nice try, buddy. Like I’m going to just spill my guts because you asked nicely.”

“You’ll be lucky if we give you a choice in the matter,” a voice murmurs in her ear, accompanied by the draw of a single clawed finger across her abdomen. It makes the hair on the back of Allison’s neck stand on edge.

“Back off, Erica,” the boy snaps, an edge of command in his voice that makes it easier for Allison to believe that this kid is in fact an Alpha. And man, that must suck to take orders from a kid. Not that she cares about their hardship, but Allison finds it hard enough taking orders from experienced adults. She’d never ask anyone to follow her so blindly like that. Stiles didn’t count. With him she didn’t _have_ to ask.

“She has a point, Scott,” a deeper voice says, and wow these guys must be inexperienced if they’re just throwing their names around in front of her like that. “If hunters have gotten wind of this, we could be in big trouble. We need to contain this.”

“We’re not killing anyone if we don’t have to,” So-called-Scott says coldly, and Allison refuses to let herself feel the gush of relief that pounds behind her ribs. “I just have one question,” he says, his red eyes gleaming. “And I’ll know if you’re lying. So tell me this: is this the first time you’ve been to this place?”

“You know, I’ve been interrogated a few times before, but this has got to be the first time they’ve opened with ‘do you come here often’,” Allison muses.

“Answer me,” Scott says. His voice leaves little room for argument.

She levels her gaze at him, weighing her options. The question seems harmless enough. “No,” she decides. “We hit town for the first time last night. I’ve never been here before in my life.”

At that, Scott seems to relax, the anger draining out of his eyes and swapping for curiosity. “What’s your name?” he asks her, taking a step closer. “And why are you here?” The Alpha holds his hands up and lets the claws retreat into fingernails, the fleshy ridge on his face smoothing into the only slightly less protrusive human brow, his eyes deepening to a dark brown. As if he can’t bring out the fangs at a moment’s notice if he needs to. If the gesture’s supposed to gain Allison’s trust, then clearly they’re dumber than they look.

“If you’re not going to kill me then you’d better let me go. I’m not feeling especially talkative at the present moment.”

He smiles wryly at that, clearly not impressed with Allison’s bravado. “So you’re a hunter?” Scott sizes her up, his eyes flicking over her with just a hint of skepticism. She narrows her eyes.

“Yeah I am, all my life. Why did you think I broke in here with enough weapons to arm SWAT team?”

Scott shrugs. “It’s just, I expected something way different. Like a couple grizzled middle-aged guys with shotguns or something.”

“I have a shotgun!” she cries, wounded pride overtaking self-preservation. “It’s literally right there. You may remember that I put a round of salt in your chest.”

His hand flits up to the tattered front of his shirt, still lined in red. Underneath it she can see the skin has already healed. “So if you’re a hunter, why are you here? I thought hunters only went after things that hurt people. Or were supposed to, at least.” There’s an odd shifting in the room, a flicker of old emotion. She feels all the more keenly aware of where she’s standing then, the burnt-out shell of an old house curling around her.

“Have you seen the news lately?” she replies, shaking off the weird feeling of memories that aren’t hers and focusing her efforts on stalling. “You’re not going to try and tell me that all those people died normal.”

“No, I’m not,” Scott says, “but it wasn’t us.”

Allison snorts. “Yeah. Right. A pack of werewolves that just so happened to be camping out in the same town as a bunch of _murdering_ werewolves. Sounds likely.”

“I’m serious!” Scott says, the expression so stupidly immature that Allison laughs for real this time. She’s still teetering on the edge of death, and she’s laughing. Kate would be proud.

“Fine then,” she allows, still grinning belligerently despite part of her brain shouting at her to shut up and sit down. “If your pack isn’t running around making smoothies out of peoples’ insides, then who is?”

“We don’t know,” Scott says, an edge of frustration in his voice as he turns and starts to pace. “But not for lack of trying. We’ve gone over every crime scene. We’ve set up patrols day and night, as often as we can spare them. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Can’t you just smell out whoever it was?” Allison asks. “Trust me, I’m no werewolf expert—well, actually, I am—but it’s kind of hard to turn someone into a human taco salad without getting up close and personal.”

“Enough with the food metaphors already,” Erica growls behind her.

“We tried tracking them already,” Scott replies. “There’s nothing _to_ smell. All around the bodies it’s like someone’s gone in with some kind of scent vacuum. The victims didn’t even smell like themselves anymore. There’s just… a void.” Not that Allison buys any of this weird werewolf bullshit, but she still finds herself intrigued. She generally considers herself to be a strong judge of character, and edge of menace aside, this Alpha seems about as devious as a sack of potatoes. And if they really wanted her off their trail, why not come up with a more convincing story? Or, you know, kill her. Which is seeming less and less likely.

“If we’re really going to have this conversation, could it be without my arms being twisted out of their sockets? Makes it kind of hard to concentrate.”  The silence ticking by is unbearable, and for a second she thinks she’s blown her chance of talking her way out of this. But then Scott gestures at someone standing outside of her frame of vision and nods in their direction.

“Isaac, search her for weapons. Erica and Boyd, hold her until he’s done, then let her go.” Footsteps pad over to her side, and the shadow of a curly head of hair slides in front of her. His quick and embarrassed pat-down finds her pistols and knives, but misses the wire circling around the inside cuff of her jacket. That one hiding place has almost never let her down. From picking locks to garroting vampires, the thin length of metal has saved her ass countless times. Maybe it wouldn’t help in a brawl against a pack of werewolves, but the cool press of it on her wrist is enough to steady her hands.

The betas release her and quickly shuffle away, obviously trusting Isaac’s searching skills just as much as they should. She rolls her shoulders slowly, working the pain out of then with a grimace as she gets her first good look at the rest of the pack. All of them look like they’re around Scott’s age. High school comes off their clothes and mannerisms in waves. They watch her like she’s holding the pin of a grenade, which hey, isn’t completely unwarranted. There had been that one time.

All in all, she’s having a hard time believing that these kids are murderers. Yet they are werewolves. And the murderer thing is still up in the air as far as she’s concerned.

“So,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck. “You guys are supposedly not killing people. That makes this whole home-invasion and assault thing slightly awkward.”

Scott shrugs. “You didn’t know.”

“Scott,” Boyd says, a guy whose biceps look like he could crush a treetrunk with one tight hug. “We can’t just let her go. You know she’ll just come back with more hunters, and they’ll be shooting at us with something a little stronger than salt.”

“Give me some credit,” Allison says quickly. “My family hunts by a certain code. If it has a human soul and is under the age of 18, we won’t touch it. Assuming it hasn’t killed anyone. So as long as you’re really not the ones murdering those people, we can part without any more bloodshed.” For the time being, at least. She’s not about to just let a pack of werewolves walk free without any kind of investigation, but at the moment she’s not really disposed to do anything about it.

Scott nods thoughtfully. “I’ll do you one better. We let you go, and you help us catch whatever it is that’s been killing people around here. That’s what you’d be doing anyways, right?” Allison narrows her eyes.

“You want us to work together.” Allison can scarcely keep the disbelief out of her voice. “Did you miss the part where I’m a hunter and you’re a werewolf, and the only thing stopping me from killing you right now is three little sentences in a hunter rulebook somewhere?”

Scott frowns. “I’m serious.”

“No offense, but I don’t really see myself linking arms with a bunch of monsters and skipping off into the sunset.”

“Oh come on,” Scott says. “We both want the same thing. My pack has already gathered all the information we can, more than you could ever find in a police record or news report—it would take you weeks to even come close to catching up on your own. You and your partner clearly know more about hunting than we do. If we work together, we can make sure that no one else has to die.” But Allison has stopped listening.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she says, something flaring up in the pit of her stomach. “How do you know about my partner?”

“Deaton pegged you as a hunter from the second you stepped through his door,” Scott explains. “After he told me I followed you for a bit, and then overheard you talking on the phone.”

“Alright, hold on. So the vet’s on your side as well?”

“Not exactly. He’s not really on anyone’s side. More like a referee, and he doesn’t like getting dragged into this sort of thing.”

Allison crosses her arms across her chest, aware of the fact that she looks childish but not really caring. “Fine, so you know I have a partner. But how do I know you’re not just letting me lead you right back to him, so you can kill us both?”

“You’re staying at the Motel 6 on West Oak Street, room 35.”

Allison blinks. “Super-werewolf-senses?”

“No, my friend works at the front desk. Now can we please just accept that fact that neither of us is going to kill the other and move on from there?” That’s a very optimistic assumption for him to make on her part, but she keeps that to herself. The fact that a bunch of werewolves knew exactly where they’re sleeping is a fact she isn’t keen to dwell on. But as suspicious as Allison is, Fido has a point. The one thing she and Stiles need right now is more information.

“Look, there’s a 90% chance that this isn’t going to work, and a 100% chance that I don’t want it to. But if there’s even a slight possibility of us making this a joint operation, I have to bring him on board. We don’t do anything alone.”

“Except wander into the middle of a pack of werewolves, apparently,” Isaac drawls. She shoots him a look, but swallows the retort that follows.

“Of course,” Scott says quickly, squaring his shoulders. “I’ll come with you.”

Allison cocks an eyebrow. “Dude, there’s this nifty invention called a cellphone. Ever heard of it?”

Scott smiles at her sarcastically. “No offense, but I don’t trust you any more than you trust me. For all I know you could have code words for him to send reinforcements. I think I’ll tag along.” Damn, that boy is annoying. The fact that he had essentially just laid out her entire plan is beside the point. But she smiles back and troops through the house at his heels, the rest of the pack trailing a healthy distance behind her.

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she warned. “Just because we’re not actively killing each other doesn’t mean we’re going to be besties.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” Scott replies.

 Stepping out into the fresh air outside makes Allison realize how much she’s come to hate the campfire-smell of burned wood in the past few minutes. The sky is white and low with clouds, an October breeze nipping at her neck. Halfway down the front steps, Scott stops in his tracks.

“Where’s the Camero?” he asks, gesturing towards a car-shaped spot of empty air in the house’s driveway. The betas look around, comprehension dawning simultaneously on their faces. Scott swears and whirls around, tearing a beat-up cellphone out of his pocket and punching the buttons.

“Is there a problem?” Allison asks carefully, glancing from one wolf to another.

“He must have taken it while we were fighting,” Boyd says, glancing around the tree line apprehensively. “We wouldn’t have noticed him leaving.”

Scott groans, looking like he’s about to throw his phone against the wall before deciding the drama would be worth less than a new phone. “He’s not picking up. I told him to wait in the woods!”

“What the hell is going on?” Allison raises her voice, that same cold knot of tension tying itself into her gut.

“One of my betas,” Scott says, running his hands through his hair. “Derek. He has some… history with hunters like you. I told him to watch the perimeter while we worked things out, to make sure he wouldn’t do something drastic. But it looks like he took off while we were distracted.”

“So?” Allison crosses her arms. “As you can see, I’m fine.”

Scott looks at her. “I can see that. He’s after someone else. Someone less protected.”

The knot tightens like a hangman’s noose. There’s only one other hunter in Beacon Hills right now. And she has his gun.

 


	2. what do you bleed?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a hunter in Beacon Hills is a dangerous occupation. With old vendettas leaving Stiles in serious danger, Allison struggles to continue working with Scott's pack despite rising tensions and new enemies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings! This chapter explores more of the course of Scott's actions had he been without Stiles and Allison during the events of season one. The next chapter will go up a week from today (next Wednesday). Hope to have you back!
> 
> Also, just a disclaimer: the majority of this story was written before season 3 came out, so all the events will be based off of seasons one and two. 
> 
> A million thanks more to my beta [Margotkim](http://margotkim.tumblr.com/), who is both the moon of my life and the anthropological personification of the boot kicking my ass into gear.

When Stiles makes it back to the motel room after a long walk from the bus stop, the last thing he wants to do is sit still. Ever since the fiasco at the high school he’s felt on edge, like he brushed a live wire and the jolt was still in his system. And then of course, there’s the crippling sense of humiliation. He wants to go punch a brick wall for the next eight hours, but that would be only slightly more idiotic than his actions earlier today. With Allison productively distracted for the time being, he figures his best bet is to buckle down and try and figure out what the hell Lydia Martin just did to him.

He still can’t believe he had let all that information slip. Field work had never been his forte; if his Dad hadn’t worked so hard to keep him out of the business then maybe things would be different. Allison had been groomed for this her whole life, and while he doesn’t envy her childhood (or lack thereof), being trained to be a super-badass monster hunter from birth probably would have come in handy during a situation like this. But instead he’d been shut in his room or locked in the back of a squad car, pouring over old books at the library and shouting frantic instructions over the phone as he wondered whether this was the moment where he’d listen to his father die. Really it’s no wonder he’s so messed up. On the plus side he’s gotten damn good at naming the nightmare, and at keeping himself busy in the twilight hours before finding out whether the people you love are coming back alive.

But he has more important stuff to do right now than brood—he may not be on Allison’s level, but letting his entire life story slip in the course of a two minute conversation is abnormal even for him.

 There’s not much information in the school database on Lydia besides how amazingly awesome she is. She’s top of her class, with all kinds of awards for math and science and glowing commendations on anything with a quantifiable grade. What really interests Stiles is the incident at her Winter Formal—when she fell victim to one of the numerous “animal attacks” that year. She’d almost died, apparently, but somehow managed to pull through with minimal physical trauma. That screamed werewolf in every way possible, but last time he checked werewolves didn’t have mind-control powers. That would just be excessive. Not to mention the wolfsbane on her locker, and fact that the animal attacks stopped shortly after her own injuries. A newly turned werewolf would have only amped the carnage up.

He digs deeper into the school files, hacking into the guidance office’s records on a hunch. Sure enough, Lydia had been sent to an off-site psychologist periodically for the past three years. Their notes were wonderfully thorough. Apparently Lydia had been suffering from some kind of long-term mental breakdown ever since the attack, which wasn’t itself unusual except for the symptoms. Fugue states, lucid dreams, even hallucinations; the girl is a regular treasure-trove of issues, and seems to have tried every possible avenue of treatment to fix them.

 Stiles sits back in his chair, running his palms over his hair thoughtfully. Whatever Lydia is, it doesn’t add up. He can’t tell whether they should be helping her or hunting her, but his gut feeling says she’s dangerous either way.

He digs through every online database he can hack his way into before admitting defeat. He still has about thirty eight questions about Lydia Martin, which is twelve more than he had when he started. Good work, Stiles. Allison will be so pleased to hear about this triumph over the forces of evil. He thinks about going and doing some more investigating at Lydia’s house, but he doesn’t want to risk himself spilling out all his darkest secrets again. There are some things that happened in middle school that he swears must never come to light—especially the Ringpop incident. So there’s not much else to do now but wait for Allison to come back, and waiting is one thing that Stiles is pretty good at.

So he channel surfs. He tunes in to the police scanner (courtesy of his cop dad, whether he knew it or not) and keeps an ear out for 187’s. He organizes all the documentation and websites he’s used on this job into neat little file folders. He orders takeout for two and arranges all the napkins and utensils on the table like they do at a fancy restaurant. He takes a cold shower.

He’s just struggling to shove his still-damp legs back into his skinny jeans (the most difficult task yet known to man) when there’s a soft, sharp _crack_ from the other room. Stiles freezes, straining his ears for another sound. When there’s nothing, he shuffles over to the bathroom door and presses his ear against the crack. More nothing. Swallowing dryly, he wrestles his jeans the rest of the way on and grabs the switchblade resting on the edge of the sink. If there’s one thing his dad always hammered home, it was to always prepare for the worst. That idea had always seemed much more paranoid when the worst wasn’t waiting right outside his door. Sucking a breath into lungs that suddenly feel too hot and too tight, Stiles twists open the lock and, painfully slowly, cracks the door open.

The cold air from outside seeps through the gap, raising goosebumps under his damp shirt. The room looks empty from here, but he can’t really see that much and isn’t all that eager to step out and investigate. He can always just live in the bathroom for the rest of this life. He’ll survive off tap water and motel soap. There’s probably enough molds growing on it to sustain him.

He pushes the door open a little further. That’s when he sees the splintered wood around the deadbolt. The realization comes just a second too late.

A strong pair of hands slam the door open the rest of the way and grab fistfuls of his t-shirt, yanking him out of the bathroom. _Here’s Johnny_ , his brain supplies, surfing a wave of giddy terror as his hands hit the floor and jar his wrists hard, the knife sliding out of reach. He can only grope for the handle before he’s yanked to his feet again and slammed against a wall, the hard curve of someone’s forearm pressing against the base of his throat. A wave of nausea bubbles in his stomach, but at least the fact that he’s feeling something means he isn’t dead yet.

“You must be Stiles.” A pair of ice-blue eyes pin him with a death glare that could stab right through the back of his skull. Stiles focuses on those, because they’re a hell of a lot better than the face that surrounds them. It’s the kind of face you only see about three seconds before your head ends up twenty feet away from your body, and right now it’s about a half a foot from his face. It’s also clearly a werewolf. Which, hey, there was a line of mountain ash encircling the room which should have taken care of that—

—If the cleaners hadn’t used his brief trip to the high school to vacuum it all up. That was something he probably should have noticed. A sort of very important thing to notice.

“Okay, okay. Wow. This is uh, quite the turn of events.” Stiles talks because it’s what he does, even though he’s not really sure what he’s saying. He’s hyper-aware of the click of his teeth, the spasms of his tongue.

“Shut up,” the stranger growls, and wow, is that his actual voice? It’s like he’s been taking vocal lessons from Christian Bale’s Batman. And Stiles must have said that aloud, because the pressure on his throat cuts his air short.

“I know why you’re here,” Wolf-man says, dialing back the angry-gravel-throat to something resembling a normal human speech pattern. “You should have kept your hunter friend closer. The two of you together might have stood a chance.”

And just like that, Stiles realizes Allison must be dead. And yeah, that fucking _hurts_. He had always suspected that at some point they would die, but the pain still takes him by surprise. He’s probably about to bite it too, and the only clear thought going through his head is that he really wishes Allison hadn’t had to die first. He would have wanted to be waiting for her, ready to take her hand and face the great big _whatever_ like they would have in life: together. At least she wouldn’t have to wait alone for long.

But then again, he wasn’t quite dead yet.

The werewolf bears his teeth, oblivious to the resolve forming behind the hard mask of Stiles’s face. “I have to say, I’m disappointed. I had hoped your boss would come after me in person.” Stiles’s back hits the wall hard as he’s shoved against it again. His teeth clang together and he tastes blood, but there’s no fear left in him. “But I’m sure you’ll be able to help me out.”

“Our boss—what are you—what boss?” Stiles grunts past the fingers closing around his windpipe, his mind racing. The man’s eyes narrow.

“Don’t play games with me. You have exactly five seconds to tell me where she is, and then I’ll tear your throat out.”

“Don’t you mean or?” Stiles says as the grip on his throat loosens enough to let him speak. “I mean, definite throat-ripping is not exactly likely to encourage my cooperation. Also I might have a hard time cooperating when I have _no idea what you’re fucking talking about_.”

His nostrils flare. “If that’s how you want to do it.” He raises his claws.

Stiles doesn’t give him time to bring them down. He jabs his knuckles into the man’s solar plexus, feeling the pressure on his neck release with a grunt of pain, then grabs the lapels of his jacket to slam their foreheads together. Because the downside of being within the “almost kissing” zone of personal space is that it makes it a hell of a lot easier to do just that.

The man crumples backwards, clutching at his face. Vision red with pain (he only hopes he did more damage to the other guy than to himself), Stiles scrabbles past his prone form to snatch up his knife from the floor. It extends with a soft _snick_ , coated with wolfsbane and about three inches long. Sure, taking down a beta with little more than a metal toothpick would be more Allison’s cup of tea, but he’s not flush with options here.

He lashes out for the werewolf’s face, the knife a bright blur of silver until it stops just two inches away. They’re on the ground, rolling, the world tilting as the knife is trapped between them. A hand digs into the wrist holding Stiles’ knife with something more than fingernails, but he won’t let go. In this moment it’s all hissing breath and burning muscles, the desperation of moving one limb a single inch more. With a yell breaking free from behind his clenched teeth Stiles lashes out with his other hand, landing a punch on the titanium plate that is the man’s face. He must have broken every bone in his hand just then, but it pays off. The grip on his wrist loosens, and driven by instinct Stiles lunges forward and buries his knife into the warm weight above him.

Something wet and copper-smelling rushes over his hand, and there’s a quiet, painful breath of air that’s more human than Stiles could have prepared for. The man rolls off him and hits the floor, his face much paler than it was before. From under his hand there’s a slick mess of red, but mostly Stiles looks at his eyes. They’re horrified. Disbelieving. Maybe that would have given Stiles pause before, but Allison’s name is a brand on his heart that leaves no room for pity.

 “What you’re feeling right now? That would be the wolfsbane worming its way to your heart,” Stiles wheezes, climbing to his feet. He’s shaky inside his own skin, but his legs are firm and purposeful. The werewolf drags himself into the bathroom, his movements already clumsy and numb. Stiles watches him dispassionately and twirls the knife.

“No use running, Big Bad. You’d be dead in half an hour, if I wasn’t about to kill you myself.” Stiles stalks towards the open door to the bathroom, shifting his grip on the knife so that it’s held tight in his hand. Allison will have to wait a while longer for him to join her. On the plus side, he’ll be sending her something to keep her busy in the meantime.

He barely crosses the threshold when a foot lashes out and hits his hand. And the goddamn knife is spinning out of his hand, don’t they make some kind of elastic bungees for situations like this? But then he’s on the ground, his feet swept out from under him and being dragged backwards. His fists lash out instinctively, hitting something firm and fleshy with a grunt. But then he’s hit back, once, twice, and he’s too busy floating through a field of black stars to notice the claws digging into his shoulders.

“You should have killed me in the fire,” the man says, deadly soft in Stiles’s ear and dragging with the effects of poison. “If you see my family, let them know that I’ll send the rest soon enough.”

Stiles starts to address the fact that he still has no idea what he’s talking about, until the man opens his chest up like a package of ground beef. His right hand sinks in and his claws rake down Stiles’s body from collarbone to stomach, drawing out a scream. Blackness dances in and out of Stiles’s vision. He chases it without thinking, but he’s left stranded with the pain. It’s not a deep cut, but from the looks of it the wolf is only just getting started.

The werewolf raises his claws again, this time his eyes locked on to the throat. Stiles doesn’t even have the energy to tuck his chin as he lies there watching the face of the man about to kill him. The moment drags on, and Stiles sees something in his eyes that he hadn’t been expecting, something unbelievable: hesitation.

Then suddenly there’s an explosion of sound, and he wonders if people wouldn’t mind keeping the noise down while he tries to focus on dying? But there are no claws or sudden rush of pain, the weight is off his chest, and something is grabbing his arms and slapping the side of his face in a way that makes his eyes want to flutter open. So they do.

It’s Allison above him, all stony-faced and furious and wonderful, and his hand finds hers and clings to it desperately. Craning his head around with a flare of pain from his chest, he sees the man in the corner slammed facedown into the floor by a blonde chick, and yeah he has to admit that’s a pretty satisfying sight. But he doesn’t want to look away from Allison for too long because damn, he never thought he’d get to see that terrifying expression on her face again.

“Hey,” he croaks. A glossary of I-thought-you-were-dead lines flash behind his eyes. “I ordered us Chinese food,” he says. That gets a smile out of her.

“Sounds good,” she says, her voice breathy with relief. “How about we eat some on the way to the hospital?”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Stiles says, knowing that’s not strictly true. Allison shoots him a glare and reaches for his hand.

“Tell that to the nurses when we get there,” she says, helping him to his feet. Pain shoots through his chest in dizzying bolts, and he finds himself staggering into the arms of someone else in the room.

“Oh look,” he manages to say, “new people. Hello, friends.”

“We’d better get him to the car,” a boy with the most impressive brow Stiles has ever seen on a homo sapiens says. He also has an uneven jaw. Stiles decides not to comment on it though, seeing the guy is currently holding about half of his weight. Stiles manages to limp, wince and shuffle his way to the door, the gashes in his chest flaring with every tug of skin.

Allison manhandles him into the passenger seat before turning back towards the hotel room, but brow-man is in her way. Stiles can’t see her face, but he imagines it’s the same one she usually has when someone gets between her and whatever it is she wants to do. They’re talking, but Stiles can’t hear the words through the glass. The gestures get bigger, the words louder. Allison falls back on her longstanding tradition of violence and tries shoves him aside. He doesn’t budge. A kick in the shin changes that, and Allison is stalking towards the open door with a hand reaching for her gun; too quickly the guy runs up to grab her, and in a second they’re full on brawling in the middle of the parking lot, yelling and grappling and insulting each other’s lineage.

Something in Stiles’s swimming brain clicks. Allison, fighting. This is the part where he has to try and help.

He pushes open the door and stumbles out, one hand digging into the tattered mess of his shirt front, a grimace of pain cemented on his face. When Allison shoves the guy aside, Stiles wraps his arms around him and drags him backwards.

“Stiles, what the hell are you doing?” Allison yells, a streak of red in her nostril where a nosebleed is springing up. At first Stiles’s new hug-buddy is too surprised to shake him off, and then he just doesn’t seem to want to hurt him. Stiles is fine with that.

“I’ll hold, you punch,” he says weakly, and that’s when his prisoner reaches up to peel Stiles off him gingerly and step away.

“Well I tried,” Stiles says, sagging backwards onto the hood of the jeep as his vision blurs. He figures he’s lost a bit of blood.

“This is no time to fight each other,” new-guy’s voice comes from somewhere seemingly far away. “Get your friend to the hospital. I’ll deal with this.”

A beat of silence later, Allison swears explosively and suddenly Stiles is being shoved back into the passenger seat of his Jeep. Their new friend’s back recedes into the shadow of the motel room, his shoulders tense and squared.

They pull out of the motel parking lot with a squeal of tires and the smell of burning rubber. Stiles watches the now-empty doorway in the side mirror until they turn onto the main road.

Stiles’s head falls back onto the headrest.

“I’m starting to think this investigation is off to a bad start,” he says. Then he faints.

 

 

 

 

When she was twelve, Allison’s mom almost died. It wasn’t all that shocking, really; when you’re raised as a hunter, you grow up with death as a constant companion. But it was the first time that Allison had been shoved into a hospital waiting room for five hours, forced to watch some idiotic children’s show they had running on a loop in the background while her mother bled out down the hall. If pressed, Allison can still hum the theme song. She lost her taste for hospitals after that.

So she doesn’t pine away by Stiles’s bedside as he lies unconscious under all that tape and gauze on his chest, a plastic tube in his arm dripping away. It looks pretty bad, but he’s okay, really he is. The wound’s not deep and they’ve got him drugged up on enough painkillers to bring down an ox. Erica stays behind to look out for him, which Allison would have a problem with if she hadn’t seen the way the girl took Derek apart back in the motel room. After that, she can’t help but give her a modicum of begrudging respect.

It’s the middle of the night when she pulls into the driveway of the Hale house, an hour after the news that Stiles will be fine. It was all she could do not to go on a shooting spree when she saw what his beta had done to her partner, but Allison had grown up with Kate. Years of watching her aunt’s emotions take control and the resulting consequences have taught Allison to keep a firmer hold on her own.  So she keeps her hands clenched tight around her bow and focuses on keeping her breathing even.

When she walks through the open doorway, Isaac and Boyd are sitting in the living room, talking in low voices. They stand up as soon as they see her, and she regards them coldly.

“Where’s Derek,” she says. It’s a demand, not a question. Isaac takes a step forward, looking like he’s about to try and reason with her before catching the look in her eyes. The excuses die on his tongue.

“He’s not here,” Boyd says. “Look, we can explain—”

“No,” she snaps, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Let me explain the situation to you. Your buddy made a big fucking mistake when he went after my partner. You and the rest of your betas may be innocent enough for now, but this Derek guy is obviously dangerous. If we hadn’t showed up when we did, Stiles would be dead right now. And I don’t give two shits what his reasons were. So consider this my prior notice: he’s officially fair game. If I see his face again, I’m putting something pointy in it.” The knowledge that Stiles’s death would have been on her hands is all too clear in her mind. It was her decision to trust Scott’s pack, to think there might be some truth in some old family words about hunting those who hunt them. Clearly she was wrong.

Isaac stares at her in contempt. “My turn now? Or are you not done making threats?” Allison says nothing, and he forges ahead. “Derek’s family was murdered by hunters. They came to town about ten years ago and burned this house down with nine people inside, human and werewolf alike. They’d never hurt one single person. Apparently that didn’t matter. Derek was sixteen.”

“He thought that you and your partner were coming to finish what the others started,” Boyd steps in. “He thought you had killed his family.”

“That seems like the sort of thing you’d want to fact-check before defaulting straight to murder,” Allison says.

Isaac raises an eyebrow. “And exactly how much fact-checking were you doing when you broke into our house? Or in that motel room? Don’t try and deny the fact that if Scott hadn’t been there, you’d be just as much the murderer that Derek thought you were.” Allison doesn’t have anything to say to that. She’s not above hypocrisy.

“We were dealing with all of this just fine before you hunters got here,” Boyd says, folding his arms across his muscular chest and narrowing his eyes. “We can handle this without you skulking around on the verge of killing us. You should leave town, if you know what’s good for you.”

“I never do,” Allison drawls. “I don’t really care what you fleabags do. I’m here until the job’s finished, and if I’m lucky I’ll settle this business with Derek while I’m at it.”

“If you go after Derek, we’ll have no choice but to stand in your way,” Isaac warns her.

“Oh, I do hope so,” Allison says with a cold smile, hoisting her crossbow to her shoulder and turning to the door. Scott stands in the frame, his jaw set and his fists tight at his side. There’s a smear of blood on his neck, but Allison can’t see a wound. She hopes it’s Derek’s.

“You just can’t seem to stop blocking my way, can you Scotty?” Allison says, her voice dripping with sugary condescension. “You’re a regular fire hazard.”

He ignores her, looking instead to Boyd and Isaac. Without a word, they dissolve into the shadows until Scott and she are alone.

“I won’t bother apologizing,” he says. “I know it won’t do any good. I was careless—I thought Derek could be trusted to reign himself in, and I was wrong. What happened to your partner was worse than I had ever feared, and it was my fault. All I can give you is the knowledge that Derek has been taken care of.”

“Is he dead?” Allison demands.

Scott shakes his head. “I told you we aren’t murderers.”

“Then he’s not taken care of,” she retorts. Scott looks away, his face half-hidden in the shadows. He doesn’t look like a leader anymore. He just looks sad.

“Allison,” he says softly, and something about his voice makes the painful clench in her stomach loosen ever so slightly. “It doesn’t have to be like this. We’d be stronger working together.”

“That option went out the window when your boy started a game of tic-tac-toe on my partner’s chest,” Allison says icily. Suddenly she can’t meet his eyes, because there’s something there she doesn’t want to see. Maybe it’s guilt, or blame, or disappointment. Whatever. She doesn’t want to deal. She’s so very tired.

Scott sighs. “I know right now you probably want to get as far away from my pack as possible. And that’s fair. But I’m going to ask you to stay.”

Allison’s mouth twists into a cruel, bitter smile. “And why would I do that?” she says. “Because you asked nicely?”

“Because innocent people are going to die otherwise,” Scott says, the intensity in his voice driving her eyes back into his. He steps forward carefully, like she’s a flighty deer. She doesn’t plan on running. “Until three years ago, I had no idea that there were such thing as werewolves. Now things are happening again that I can’t explain, and just like before I have no idea what to do. All I do know is that people are going to keep getting hurt until we do something to stop them. And the best way to do that is by helping each other.” He steps closer, holding out his hand. “Please. I’m not asking you to trust us. Just to give us one more chance.”

Allison grinds her teeth, her eyes still locked on his. He’s such a baffling mixture of pathetic and imposing, powerful and naive. She can tell that three years ago he would have been just the sort of guy she’d have fallen head over heels in love with. She was an idiot back then, but she never could resist the puppy-dog eyes. Things have changed since then, but as loathe as she is to admit it, he has a point. Without the wolves’ input she has zero leads to go on, and in the time it takes to get caught up more people will undoubtedly die. In the face of that, risking her own life is a small price to pay.  

“I’m not going to shake your hand,” she growls, and the grin that lights up Scott’s face could outshine the sun, if the sun had better bone structure. “ _One_ more chance. And I do mean that. You guys blow it one more time and you can kiss this alliance goodbye.”

“You won’t regret this,” Scott says eagerly.

“I’m regretting it already,” Allison grumble, aware of the fact that she’s just signed herself over to something that will undoubtedly bite her in the ass later. Possibly literally. “But no more saving the day tonight. It’s late, I’m tired, and I smell like dog. If you’re still interested in playing heroes, come find me tomorrow morning in the hospital. Come before six and I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

With that she storms out past Scott and his stupid face, leaving him and his pack to brood in that creepy house. Before she gets into her car, she stops and stares out into the darkness of the trees. She bets anything that Derek is watching there. Raising a middle finger, she drags the digit across her throat in the kind of gesture that even a dumbass psycho werewolf can’t misinterpret. He’s been warned. She only hopes he’s dumb enough to ignore it.

 

 

 

 

When Stiles wakes up, his head feels like it’s been filled with cement and then jettisoned into space. He decides that the waking world can go screw itself.

When he wakes up the second time he’s feeling better, although there’s a tight, expectant feeling in the middle of his chest. When he raises his hand to touch it he’s given a painful reminder. So they got him to a hospital after all. He wonders what their explanation was this time: that someone left half a rake on the slip-and-slide?

There’s a curtain around his bed, and he can hear other people moving around outside of it. There’s an IV in his arm, and he thinks about tugging it out like the badass hero always does in the movies, but decides the better of it. There’s a cold, uncomfortable hardness pressing into the middle of his back; gingerly turning to his side, his fingers close around the weathered sheath of his hunting knife. Allison must have slipped it there before she left. That gives Stiles a painful chuckle. She did always know how best to take care of him.

“Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty,” a voice advises him as the curtain around his hospital bed is whisked open. It’s all he can do to shove the knife under the blanket before he’s hit with an eyeful of fluorescent lighting. There’s a girl standing there about Stiles’s age, with long blonde hair and just enough eye shadow to put her just on the border of scary. She’s chewing gum in a loud, overwrought, and totally obnoxious way like she knows she can get away with it. She grins with a mouth of perfect white teeth.

“Looking good, Aurora. How are we feeling?”

Stiles gingerly twists his neck to stare at the gauze poking through the top of his hospital gown. “Been better,” he says. “But also been worse. My insides aren’t on the outside, so I’m counting that as a win.” While he’s talking the girl plops down on the edge of his bed, putting her feet up so that they’re resting just by Stiles’s shoulder. She’s wearing black leather boots, no heels, the kind you’d wear on a night out when there’s a high chance of stomping someone’s face in.

“So I’m pretty sure you’re not a nurse,” Stiles says carefully, and that gets him a laugh. It’s more of a cackle really, tossing her head back and showing some more teeth. When she looks at him again Stiles thinks he recognizes the look in her eyes. It’s predatory. Realization dawns.

“I remember you,” he says, his hands tightening on the hilt of his knife. “You were in the motel room.” The playful flirtatious manner drops like an anchor in deep water. “You aren’t human.”

“Don’t worry princess, I’m one of the good guys. You may recall me beating the shit out of the guy who roped you into a game of Operation,” she says. “I’m just taking over the watch while that trigger-happy friend of yours gets some shuteye.”

Stiles laughs hollowly before he remembers that pain-free laughter is currently off the table. “Right. A werewolf, one of the good guys. Sounds likely. No offense or anything, but in my experience the closest werewolves come to ‘good’ is ‘not actively evil’.” She’s just a little too far away for him to reach with just his knife, and he’s not exactly in peak condition either. Besides, this doesn’t add up: why play Florence Nightingale when she could just as easily have gone to ground and never heard from either hunter again? Or killed him in his sleep, for that matter. Whatever’s going on here, Stiles doesn’t trust it. He shifts his position all the same, ready to lunge at a second’s notice.

Erica just shrugs. “Fine, don’t believe me. Your girlfriend will be back to give you the low-down soon enough.”

“I’d rather not wait,” Stiles says, moving to sit up.

 In a second Erica’s a foot away, pressing his shoulders back into the pillows with just a little too much strength to be human. Fire blooms in streaks on his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs. “Woah there lover boy,” she says firmly. “You’re supposed to be bedridden. Doctor’s orders.”

“Well I certainly will be now,” Stiles wheezes, silently sliding the knife back into its sheath and thanking whatever gods will listen that he’s not as jumpy as Allison. “I think you dislocated my shoulders.” She looks impressed with herself.

“I’m Erica by the way,” she says, offering her hand. Stiles gives it a good long stare before reaching out to shake it, because he figures that it’s not the time or place to jump up and start stabbing werewolves in the middle of a busy hospital. Thinking back to the scene in the motel room, she may have helped save his life. Plus the memory of her wailing on his attacker is already a pretty fond one.

“Stiles,” he replies, figuring that if Allison had given her real name then he might as well too. “Otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty, apparently. Speaking of which, how long was I out?”

“A week,” she says simply, and the look on Stiles’s face must have been pretty priceless because she can’t keep it together for more than a couple seconds. “Ah man, totally fucking with you. No, you were put through the semi-human can-opener just last night. Have to say, I’m surprised you’re up and at ‘em this soon afterwards.”

“I’m a hardy weed,” Stiles says. “What happened to that guy, anyways? Anything with the words ‘body unrecovered’ would be music to my ears.”

Erica taps her fingers on her knee. “Look, I know this probably won’t make you feel any more charitable towards him or anything, but this whole thing was a case of mistaken identity. Derek’s not a murderer, he’s just… fucked up.”

“You’re right,” Stiles says. “That doesn’t make me feel more charitable. Where is he?”

Erica sighs. “He’s with Scott. Scott being the guy you groped awkwardly in the parking lot last night.” Ah yes. He remembers Scott. He hopes that Scott tears Derek a new one.

“It was more of an awkward, one-way, backwards hug,” Stiles says absently. “Is he a werewolf too?”

Erica nods. “There’s me, him, Derek, Boyd, and Isaac,” she lists, ticking them off on her fingers. Stiles whistles appreciatively, but inside he feels a flutter of panic. Team hunter is hopelessly out-gunned. Or, out-clawed. Whatever. They’re potentially screwed.

“Is there anyone in this town who doesn’t struggle with excess body hair come the full moon? It’s like this town’s on top of a frickin’ Hellmouth,” he says. There’s a beat of silence. “…It’s not, right?” Stiles asks. “God, please tell me it’s not.” Erica snorts, but before she can answer her head whips around to stare at the curtain like she’s looking right through it. Stiles does not miss the fact that this town’s possible Hellmouth-status is yet undetermined.

A second later the curtain draws back again, and Stiles is met with an armful of Allison. She smells like bad coffee and sweat, but it’s the most welcome thing in the world. She detaches, careful not to brush the swath of white plastered over his chest. The skin around her eyes is dark and tired, her makeup smeared from too much rubbing.

“Hey,” Stiles says with as warm a smile as he can muster. “Come to visit me on my deathbed at least, I see. Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“I thought I’d take a leaf out of your book,” Allison replies. “How are you?”

“About how you’d expect after nearly having your insides become your outsides,” Stiles retorts. He shoots a wary glance at Erica. “Remind me when we started getting all buddy-buddy with gremlins?”

“I find that offensive,” Erica interjects.

“Call it an alliance of convenience,” Allison says, and quickly fills him in on the events at the Hale house.

“From what I can tell, Scott’s pack is clean. I put my time last night to good use going through the records, and I found no damning evidence that any of them have ever killed a human. But don’t think for a second that I trust them,” Allison says. She shoots Erica a dirty look, which the blonde returns in kind.

“O-kay,” Stiles says, too tired to argue. “Not exactly conventional by any standards, but I trust your call. Have you had any luck with the case yet?”

Allison smiles. “As a matter of fact. I went through the news reports for the past three years in Beacon Hills. Get a load of what I found.” She pulls her laptop out of her backpack, turning it around to show him the screen.

“On top of the extra weird stuff, like people disappearing for days and showing up with no memory, I found even more. Missing pets. Flash fires. Bird migrations being disturbed. Various other weird and unexplainable stuff. Sound familiar?” Stiles frowns, leaning forward with a wince to squint at the screen.

“That’s witch activity,” he says.

Erica’s eyebrows raise. “Witches? What, like with brooms?”

Stiles ignores her. “But there are some things that don’t match up; no one’s died yet, for one. And if there’s one sure sign of a witch, it’s the body count. Is there some sort of pattern at least, someone who might be benefiting from all of this?”

Allison shakes her head. “Not that I could see, but you should take a look. I may have missed something—” She stops when she sees Stiles’s eyes widen. “I take it I missed something?”

“What? No, it’s not that,” Stiles says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I just remembered something that I meant to tell you, but then there was blood and pain and it sort of slipped my mind. I caught up with Lydia Martin at the high school, and it was… weird.” Stiles rubs the back of his neck self-consciously and braces for impact. “I may have sort-of told her that we’re hunters. Sort of.”

“You did _what_?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Stiles cries. “It was like I couldn’t stop myself from talking, but not in the normal way. And she had a wolfsbane wreath right there on the front of her locker.”

“Jesus,” Allison says, dragging her fingers through her hair. Stiles can see she’s started chewing her nails again, which is never a good sign. “If she’s our witch, then we may be in some serious shit. If she knows we’re hunters then she knows it’s only a matter of time before we come after her.”

“Um.” Stiles fidgets with his blanket nervously. “This would probably be a good time to bring up the fact that I also told her our real names?” The sight of Allison sinking her head into her hands is enough to make Stiles feel like the shittiest person in the world.

“What?” Erica asks, looking from one hunter to another. “Why does that matter? Not like you guys are in the phonebook.”

“There are certain spells,” Stiles explains in a tired voice. “Spells that require some sort of direction, like coordinates. Otherwise they could go off on anyone. Usually a personal item, like ring or a lock of hair, is what most people go with, but a name and occupation will get the job done too.”

Erica looks skeptical. “And you’re _sure_ it was some kind of spell? Not just you spilling your guts to impress a pretty girl?”

“Stiles wouldn’t do that,” Allison says sharply, before he can follow through on the anger roiling up in his stomach. “I think you’re forgetting the fact that, despite present appearances, we’re as close to professionals as you’re likely to find in this business. We’ve been hunting together for years, and we’re not idiots. So don’t patronize us.” A swell of pride bubbles up to compete with the pain in Stiles’s chest. Allison is the only person who has ever taken him seriously, and to him that’s everything. Erica just snorts dismissively, but she doesn’t press the issue.

“So what do we do?” Stiles asks. It’s the question everyone’s thinking but no one has an answer to. The silence stretches on from discouraging to outright depressing. Erica’s gum shatters it with a snap.

“We can’t just gank her,” Allison says slowly. “She’s just a kid, and for all we know she hasn’t actually killed anyone yet. The murders we’ve seen so far don’t look anything close to being witch-related.”

“So what? We’re looking at two big bads now?” Stiles snorts and shakes his head. “Plus five or so questionably-innocent bystanders who happen to we werewolves. This town is freakin’ weird.”

“You’re telling me,” Erica says darkly.

“So we don’t make a move on Lydia,” Stiles says thoughtfully. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do a little poking around. We should take a look at her house, see if there’s anything murder-y there. Once we know more we can decide how to deal with her.”

Allison stands up and rolls her shoulders. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe even a good one. I’ll see what I can find.” And with that she turns to walk out of the room.

“Uh, forgetting something?” Stiles calls after her, an edge in his voice. She stops and heaves a sigh.

“You’re in no condition for a hunt, Stiles, let alone after a witch.”

“I can help! I have knowledge!”

Allison groans and presses her palms into her eye sockets. “No offense, but you’d only slow me down. You know how much I hate putting you on the bench, but we have to think rationally here.” Stiles grinds his teeth. He can’t argue with that logic, but that kind of makes him hate it even more. He can hardly even sit up without feeling like good ole Derek Hale is dragging his claws down his chest all over again.

“So what, you’re just going to go after a potentially powerful witch with no backup? Because that’s probably going to end well.”

Allison’s face darkens. “I’m not going alone.” And somehow that’s even worse. Stiles raises an eyebrow.

“Who’s the idiot your recruited to go skipping into a witch den with you?”

“His name is Scott,” Allison says, not without hesitation. “He’s the alpha.”

Stiles narrows his eyes and purses his lips, nodding skeptically. “Mm _hmm_. Okay. Erica, can you give us a minute please?” Erica widens her eyes dramatically and strides away. “And close the door!” Stiles yells after her. It slams a second later.

“You might want to turn the TV on too,” Allison suggests before he can get a word in. “Their hearing is pretty insane.”

Stiles does as she says, and Keeping Up With the Kardashians starts blaring through the speakers. Perfect. No one would willingly listen to that.

Once that’s done, he turns back to Allison and tries to breathe normally. “What are you thinking?” He hisses, gesturing furiously despite the stabs of pain in his chest. “Going to snoop around a witch’s house with a _werewolf_ as your only backup? How is that sane?”

“I never said it was sane, I just said it might work,” Allison retorts. “Without Scott’s pack, our best strategy is sitting around waiting for someone to get ripped limb-from-limb, and then hopefully pick something up from there. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that not happen.”

“What exactly about teaming up with bloodthirsty monsters makes you think that physical maiming will be _less_ likely?” Stiles cries. Allison runs her hands over her face in exasperation.

“Look Stiles, you weren’t there. They easily could have killed me, but the worst I got was a pulled muscle. They say they haven’t killed anyone, and I don’t think they’re lying.” She fixes those deep brown eyes on his face. “Believe me, I don’t like this. But it’s our best chance.” Stiles holds her gaze for as long as he can before throwing his hands up in the air and wincing with the resulting stab of pain.

“Fine,” he says through a grimace. “Go run off with wolf-boy, see what you can find. I’ll just decompose here until you get back.” A grin breaks out on Allison’s face and she slaps his shoulder roughly. It hurts like hell.

“I’ll be fine, Stiles. Make sure you’re all better by the time I get back,” she says, turning to leave.

“Oh, and Allison,” he calls out after her. She pauses in the doorway. “If Scooby Doo so much as breathes the wrong way: shoot him.”

 

 

 

 

She finds Scott sitting in the hallway leafing through a magazine about this year’s fall fashion. When he sees her coming he lowers it and breaks into a smile. The new circumstances have brought a huge change in him from the night before; the hardened commander she saw in front of his pack had receded behind what seemed to be a normal high school senior. When he looks at her, his eyebrows quirk in a way that’s almost teasing. She shakes herself internally. Remember who the enemy is.

“Alright furball, first things first. Us working together does not mean I have to like you, or even that I won’t kill you if you pull anything funny. So don’t start embroidering us any ‘Pack Family’ pillows. You’re not on the team.” It’s infuriating how her words just make his grin even broader.

“Whatever you say,” he says, struggling to repress his smile before Allison does it for him. “I’m just glad you came around.”

“It’s the only course of action that makes sense right now.” She turns and abruptly strides down the hallway, expecting him to follow. Sure enough he pulls even with her, his shoulder brushing slightly against hers.

“Whatever you say, G.I. Jane,” he replies easily. She glares at him out of the corner of her eyes as they step out into the sunlight.

“You are far too happy than what’s good for you right now,” she says. He just shrugs. God, she hopes he isn’t plotting something. Or high. This is probably a huge mistake.

She slides into the driver’s side of Stiles’s jeep and starts it with a thrum of the engine. Scott takes the passenger seat and immediately begins fidgeting with the glove compartments. Allison holds her tongue until one of the panels pops open and one of her spare knifes falls out into his lap.

“Give me that,” she snarls, snatching it away from him before he manages to put an eye out and shoving it under her seat. “Stop touching things. And don’t get any fur on the seats.”

 “Oh, can we stop by my house first?” Scott asks, dragging a finger over the dash and inspecting the dust he finds there. “I need to pick up some important stuff.”

“What, did Mom forget to pack a bag lunch or something?” Allison grumbles. Scott just stares at her and she’s never been good with the silent treatment. With a growl she throttles the steering wheel and gives the Jeep a bit more gas than it probably needs. Werewolves were supposed to be powerful creatures of the night; this was just irritating.“Give me an address. _Quickly_.”

Scott’s house is just a few minutes away, and decidedly ordinary-looking. Allison isn’t expecting an evil lair or anything, but after seeing the burnt-up husk where they had set up werewolf home base she still feels surprised. Scott hops out of the Jeep as soon as she pulls into the driveway, and after a moment spent idling in the car she kills the ignition and slinks out after him.

“Mom!” he calls out as he tramps into the living room. Allison hovers in the doorway behind him, acutely aware of how weird this is.

“Scott?” a woman’s voice calls out. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Allison hears his voice. “I just need the stuff. And I have a friend with me.”

_Not a friend_ , Allison protests to herself, drifting nervously towards the sound of voices. She finds them in the kitchen, where Scott rifles through the cabinets in search of whatever it was he wanted in the first place. A woman in an apron stands with her back to Allison, a mane of curly black hair bursting around her head. When she hears footsteps behind her she turns around and regards Allison with a smile. Allison can’t help but falter, a sharp breath catching in her lungs. There’s something wrong with her face.

From just above the right edge of her lip and descending below the hem of her shirt, three ugly scars march down her neck and the lower part of her face. They look old, but not too old. Allison watches carefully, not sure of what to say.

“You must be the hunter,” the woman says sternly, wiping her hands on a towel and fixing Allison with a look that tells her she’s being sized up. They’re covered in black dust, and Allison sees now that she’s been preparing plastic bags of mountain ash, ready for spreading.

“You can call me Melissa,” she says, so easy with her name. “I’m Scott’s mom, as you probably figured out by now.” Allison realizes that Scott has stopped what he’s doing to watch her carefully, like he’s weighing something in her face. She clears her throat.

“It’s nice to meet you, Melissa,” she says, because it seems like the right thing to do. She’s rewarded with another smile, bigger and brighter this time. When she smiles the tracks through her face are hardly even noticeable.

“I understand that you’re going to be working with the pack for a while,” Melissa says, returning to her work. “I’ll be an interesting switch-up to have someone around who actually knows what they’re doing.”

“Come on, mom,” Scott complains.

“What, it’s true,” she says with a wink. “We could all use a bit of professional help. You make sure to look after them, because trust me, they need it.”

Allison wants to say something, tell her that she can’t even look out for her own partner all the time, and why would she want to do anything more than the bare minimum for a bunch of werewolves anyways? But for once she can’t heave the bitter words out. So she just nods her head and says, “Yeah.” She turns on her heel and leaves before she can hear what Melissa says next.

Scott comes out a few minutes later to find her sitting on the hood of the Jeep, her arms crossed over her chest and a glare calcifying on her face. He climbs back into the car without a word and she’s forced to follow him, wrenching the keys in the ignition and peeling out of the driveway.

They ride in silence for a while before Scott leans over, something dangling from a cord in his fingers.

“Amulet,” he says. “It’ll protect against some lower-grade magic.”

Allison accepts it, forcing her jaws to unclench. At least something good came out of their little side trip. “Where did you get this?”

“Doc Deaton made it for all of us when all this weird stuff started to go down. We’ve always had extras, just in case. I thought you might want one, seeing as we’re facing down some serious mojo here.”

Allison is quiet for another moment before she can’t restrain herself anymore. “I can’t believe you had me meet your mom!” she explodes, taking a corner a little faster than necessary. Scott looks confused.

“I just thought it would be safer—”

 “Don’t give me that. I told you, we’re not B-F-F’s all of a sudden now. I’m not interested in your life or your friendship, so just keep it all away from me. Okay?” There’s a long, awkward pause in which Allison ponders exactly how much she hates werewolves before Scott gives a curt nod. They drive in stale silence for a little longer, Allison letting the anger drain from her hands on the wheel to the road until she knows she can be civil again. Because there’s something she needs to ask.

“So what happened to her?” she asks. “Your mom, I mean.”

“Thought you weren’t interested in my life,” Scott says tiredly. Allison shrugs.

“If she’s a werewolf, I need to know.”

Scott sighs. “No. She’s still human.”

“Then what happened to her face?” Allison presses.

“I did.”

 All the cynical remarks she had been prepared to make evaporated off her tongue. She wonders whether she should apologize, or tell him that she expected nothing better. But Scott’s not done talking yet.

“When I was first turned it was around the first week of school. I didn’t really know anyone yet, no friends or anything. Do you know how werewolves can learn to control their power?” He stares at her in a way that makes her want to squirm.

“It never really came up in my conversations with other werewolves,” she says sarcastically. Her conversations with other werewolves were usually much shorter and involved a lot more roaring and screaming.

Scott shifts his gaze out the window. “They need an anchor. Something to think about that keeps them calm, keeps them conscious. For lots of people it’s a spouse, or a close friend, but I… I didn’t really have anyone. It happened on the first full moon.” He shakes his head, a twisted smile on his lips. “That could have been the end of it right there. But she got better, and she helped me get better too. I still slipped up every once in a while, but with Derek’s help I got it under control.”

Allison snorts in spite of herself. Scott throws her an inquisitive look. “Sorry, I just find it difficult to believe that the guy who ripped into my partner was giving anyone lessons in anger management.”

“Derek’s had it rough,” Scott says, a defensive tone in his voice. “He’s not a bad person. He just makes some bad decisions sometimes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Allison says snidely. “If you see him be sure to convey my apologies, and let him know that it was totally cool of him to put Stiles in the hospital. I didn’t realize that he’s _had it rough_.” Scott frowns and looks like he’s going to say something, but seems to change his mind. Allison can’t help but use the break in conversation to ask another question.

“So what is your anchor, then?” she asks.

“My mom,” he says immediately. “She’s the strongest person I know. I couldn’t ask for anyone better to keep me human, full moon or no.”

“You’re lucky,” Allison says without thinking. As soon as the words are out of her mouth she wishes she could drag them back again, or maybe murder the werewolf and dump his body somewhere so she wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences. Unfortunately all she can do is grip the wheel tighter when he turns to look at her.

“What makes you say that?” he asks carefully, clearly aware of the thin ice beneath him. Allison sighs explosively and grinds her teeth. Family drama is not something she ever expected discuss with anyone, let alone a werewolf. But something keeps her talking.

“Mine just always pushed me,” Allison forces out. “Or did, when I was living with her. ‘Be a hunter. Drop out of school. Stick with the family.’ In the end I just couldn’t take it any longer. So I left.”

Scott nods, and she’s so afraid that he’s going to apologize or say something pitying that will require her to bite his head off. He doesn’t. They drive on in silence. Allison is worried not only by the fact that she’s apparently willing to disclose personal information about her family to this guy, but also by the fact that it felt kind of good. Clearly she needs to watch herself much more closely than she has been. It’s easy to forget whose side you’re on when the enemy is riding shotgun.

They’re saved by any further conversation by the glint of sunlight off the metal street numbers on Lydia’s mailbox. Allison slows down, sliding her eyes over the exterior as it passes by. The windows are dark, and no cars are in the driveway. Behind the house the woods stretch out in a tangled sprawl. She turns a corner and pulls over out of sight of the house, her eyes finding Scott.

“Let’s get a closer look,” she says, sliding out of the car.

They wander down the sidewalk doing their best to look like two teenagers out for a stroll after school. The sun is warm but the air is colder, and a few dead leaves skitter across the path in front of them. Other than the sounds of distant traffic, the area is quiet and still.

When they draw even with Lydia’s house Allison stops and pretends to retie her shoe in the age-old gesture of stalling. She hears Scott sniffing at the air.

“I don’t hear anyone inside,” he says in an undertone, “and the newest scents I can find are from this morning.”

“I’m liking the sound of that,” Allison says, stepping past the gated threshold and walking up to the front of the house. Scott follows quietly behind her, glancing around nervously.

“How do you plan on getting in?” he asks. She slips her lock-picking kit out of her pocket in response, and she can’t quite repress an impish grin at the impressed look on Scott’s face.

 “One of the perks of growing up a hunter,” she says as she leans down to fiddle with the keyhole while Scott keeps watch. After a brief moment of clicking and quiet swearing, the door swings open.

As she steps inside, a flowery smell wafts from somewhere deep in the house. She hears Scott gag from just outside the door.

“What is that _smell_?” he groans, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Allison is about to ask what his problem with Febreeze is when she realizes.

“Wolfsbane,” she murmurs, gesturing at a vase of purple flowers on a table in the hall. “She must have a hell of a lot of it in here if it’s affecting you so strongly.” Scott nods and squints his eyes shut painfully. “Do you need to stay outside?”

“No, I’m okay,” he says, shaking his head and slapping his cheeks. “Just poke me occasionally to make sure I’m still breathing.” He moves to step through the door. Suddenly he stops, and his gaze falls down to the floor and the thin line of black power that Allison had stepped over. Mountain ash.

Allison scuffs the line with her toe, letting Scott pass over it with a nod. Clearly there’s more to Lydia than meets the eye, and Allison has a feeling that none of it is good.

They prowl through the house, digging through drawers and feeling under the edges of tables where some kind of hidden box might be tucked away. Allison knows all the usual places, though she’s never actually faced a full-blown witch on her own before. There had been one when she was fourteen and hunting with her parents, but they’d forced her to stay in the car when they dealt the final blow. That says enough in itself about how dangerous witches could be; her parents hardly ever held her back from a hunt.

The first floor is clear of everything except a metric ton of wolfsbane, stuffed into vases and laying in bundles on the tables. Scott goes around opening all the windows despite Allison’s protests, saying that otherwise he was going to pass out or vomit and assuring her that he’d close them before they left. When they climb the stairs their feet sink into the plush carpet like it’s trying to suck them in. They creep on tiptoe even though they know there’s no one home. Something about the house demands it.

It doesn’t take them long to find Lydia’s room. The door is closed and locked, with a strand of flowers curling across the wooden panels. Scott’s breath comes short and fast behind her as she picks at the lock. This door takes her much longer than the first, but eventually it clicks under her hand.

It’s like opening the door to a hidden garden. Every available surface seems to have a pot of wolfsbane growing on it, an explosion of hooded purple flowers standing vigil over the bed. Outside the one window is a window box of flowers grown so tall they block out everything except a tired sliver of yellow that slouches in over the top.

The ground under Allison’s feet shifts as she steps inside; glancing down, she sees a band of black dust a foot wide surrounding the entire perimeter of the room. She stoops down to rub a pinch between her fingers.

“Mountain ash again,” she murmurs. “Jesus. What the hell is going on here?” When she glances behind her Scott is just standing outside the room, his eyes unfocused. It’s not an encouraging sight. Working quickly, Allison searches the room, overturning pillows and pulling out drawers before shoving everything back into place as best she can. She’s very thorough, but nothing turns up except more wolfsbane petals. Standing in the middle of the room, Allison rakes her brain for what to do next and comes up with squat.

There’s a soft thumb behind her. When she turns around Scott is on the floor, twitching, gasping for breath, his eyes flashing from brown to red, red to brown. Without thinking Allison lunges forward, looping her arms under his shoulders and dragging him out into the hallway. She can feel his breath on her neck, reminding her far too much of the panting of a wolf.

“Hold on,” she says forcefully, hauling his arm over her shoulder as she half-drags, half-carries him down the stairs. It’s all she can do not to lose her footing and send them tumbling to the bottom; Scott is way heavier than he looks. His breaths come shorter and more desperately, but she can’t seem to go any faster.

She makes it to the bottom landing and hauls him to the back, her heart pounding. She can see the screen door swinging in front of them when Scott comes alive under her arms, thrashing and clawing at her in an attempt to get away. Allison dives away, hitting the floor and knocking against something with a crash of china. Scott is crouched in the middle of the floor, his head in his hands, unmoving. With painful slowness, Allison pulls the pistol out of her back pants and holds it at the ready. The safety slides off with a quiet click.

Scott’s head jerks up at the noise, and before Allison can move he’s surging forward, fangs a sharp glint in his mouth. _Shoot him_ , she tells herself, but her hand is frozen on the trigger. Her finger won’t move.

Scott hits her like a sixteen wheeler, grabbing onto her jacket and hauling her to her feet as the gun spins out of her hand. Her back hits the wall with a crunch of plaster, Scott’s claws digging into the leather of her jacket to hold her there. Less than a foot away, his face wavers from wolflike to human, his pupils opening like black umbrellas. Forcing the panic down her throat, she meets his gaze.

“Scott,” she says, talking fast. “Listen to me. I don’t know if this will do anything. But I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to kill you either. So just listen to my voice. And don’t fucking kill me.” Something shifts in his face that looks like fear or panic, a pinching at his brows. He growls deep in the back of his throat.

“Come on Scott,” she says through gritted teeth. “Pull it together!” A faint breeze gusts across her cheek from the open door across the room, bringing with it a second’s worth of fresh air. Scott groans, his hands tightening in her jacket as he doubled over slightly with a shudder. He stays that way for a minute, his breathing getting slower and deeper. His hands loosen and he slumps forward with his forehead falling on her shoulder, like the strength’s gone out of his legs.

“I… I think I’m okay now,” he says, his voice tiny and muffled through Allison’s jacket. His face is practically buried in the crook of her neck, and that realization brings with it the kind of feelings that have very little to do with the fact that his teeth are inches from her jugular. Now that’s unexpected. He shifts slightly, still pressing against her, and brings his head up slightly to look her in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his words slurring a bit.

“It’s okay,” Allison manages to get out. Scott doesn’t move away, his lips parted slightly to greedily suck in the air. Allison tries not to think too hard about that. He smells like pine and smoke, thick and woodsy under the cloying reek of wolfsbane.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and it’s like he’s pouring those liquid brown eyes into hers. She can hardly think.

“I’m fine.” Just experiencing a bit of an internal crisis.

“I’m not,” Scott announces, and his knees promptly buckle. Allison doesn’t even think to catch him before he hits the ground.

“Shit,” she mutters for more reasons than one, zipping her coat up to cover the blush creeping its way out of her shirt. What the hell was she thinking? She grabs Scott’s arm, keeping him at length this time, and drags him out onto the back porch. He blinks and stirs as soon as they step into the open air, and Allison leaves him there to come to his bearings while she checks the perimeter of the backyard and walks off whatever weird and freaky feelings had boiling over in there.

It was the wolfsbane. It had to be. Werewolf or no, she spent enough time in the overpowering odor of flowers that she wouldn’t be surprised if it started to do stuff to her head. Like giving her very un-hateful feelings towards Scott McCall.

When she wanders back a few minutes later Scott is sitting up and looking disoriented, his hair sticking up in soft, stupid wisps. _Focus, Allison_.

“How are you feeling?” She asks carefully. Scott winces slightly and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Like someone tried to drown me in a vat of perfume,” he says. “My brains feel like they’re about to burst out of my eyeballs.” Suddenly he looks up at her, concern sweeping over his face.

“But that doesn’t matter,” he says, struggling to his feet. He sways dangerously, but Allison doesn’t offer him a steadying hand. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you? God, I could have killed you.” He turns away from her, pressing his palms to his eyes.

“I’m fine, Scott,” she says. He shakes his head.

“So much for building trust,” he says bitterly. “I’m sure you’re just overwhelmed with confidence in my ability to control myself now.”

“Dude, you were _drugged_ ,” Allison says. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you lose it big time, and you’ve had plenty of reason and opportunity to do so before. Yeah, you should have gotten outside before you even came close to hulking-out, but I get it. Stiles is always putting himself in danger too.”

Scott is still for a minute, then turns around and offers her a weak smile. “Alright,” he says. “Alright. Thank you.”

Allison isn’t sure what comes after that, and apparently Scott isn’t either, so they stand there in yet another awkward silence. They’re making a habit out of this. It feels like there’s something they should be doing, but neither of them seem to know what it is.

“Should we…go?” Allison asks, gesturing towards the side gate. “I don’t think we’re going to get much more conclusive evidence than that that Lydia’s in on this somehow. And it’s not like I don’t cherish the idea of running into Lydia when she gets back, but… I don’t cherish it.”

“Good point,” Scott allows. “I’ll meet you at the Jeep; I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go back into the house.”

Allison nods and steps back inside, going around to close the windows and clean up the worst of the damage. There’s a slight dent in one of the walls, barely noticeable if you don’t know to look, but she had knocked over a table and sent a vase of flowers shattering across the floor.

She’s stooping to pick up the pieces when the front door opens.

Allison freezes. A middle-aged man steps through the door, followed shortly by a woman carrying grocery bags. They stop in the foyer, staring straight ahead, before their eyes slowly focus on Allison. She’s on her knees with shards of the vase in her hand, her gun clearly peeking out from under her coat. All she can think to say is, “Um.”

They stare at her blankly, without saying anything. Unsure of what to do, Allison slowly rises to her feet. Their eyes follow her, but they don’t even seem to see her.

“Who are you?” the woman asks distantly.

“…My name is Carol,” Allison says slowly. “I’m a… friend of Lydia’s. I was just coming over to work on some homework when I broke your vase.”

“Oh, alright,” the woman says. Her eyes look glazed, and as she’s talking the man who Allison assumes is her husband wanders off without a word. Leaving the broken pieces on the edge of a table, Allison steps forward carefully. There’s obviously something off about them. They look like they aren’t even aware of where they are, or what’s going on. Mrs. Martin looks at her with a look of vague and helpless confusion until she’s standing right in front of her.

“Are you alright?” Allison asks, because not leaving well-enough alone is just what she does. The woman smiles distractedly.

 “Oh, I’m fine, Lydia,” she says, reaching out to pat Allison’s head. “Why don’t you go get washed up for dinner, and help me set the table?” With one last smile she wanders after her husband, who is staring at the refrigerator door. Unsure of what else to do, Allison slips out the front door and struggles not to break into a sprint as the goosebumps creep up the back of her neck.

Scott is waiting by the bushes a couple houses away, an anguished look on his face. “I tried to warn you they were coming, but it was too late,” he says. “What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Allison says slowly. “I think her parents might have been hexed, or drugged or something. They weren’t… there, if you know what I mean.” Scott frowns, and Allison glances around the empty street with a sudden shot of nerves. It feels like someone’s watching.

“Come on,” she says. “We can talk about it in the car. This place is giving me a really creepy vibe.” Scott wastes no time in obliging.

They drive for five minutes before Scott speaks up.

“So, was all that normal for a witch?”

Allison laughs because there’s not much else she can do. “From what I know, as far into ‘no way’ as you can go without breaking back into yes again.” She shakes her head. “I’m no witch expert, but I’ll tell you one thing: what we saw back there wasn’t just generic magic stuff. It was set up with one goal in mind, and that’s repelling werewolves.” Something occurs to her, and her next question has an edge to it. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” She glances at him out of the corner of her eyes.

“I might,” Scott says after a pause. Allison grits her teeth and hits the brakes, pulling off onto the side of the road so she can properly enunciate what she’s about to say. She turns to face Scott, who meets her stare belligerently.

“This would be a good time for you to tell me what you’re currently hiding from me.”

“I didn’t think it was important,” Scott says.

Leaning back and banging her head against the seat rest, Allison hisses out a sigh and counts to ten. “Didn’t think _what_ was important?”

“Three years ago, the same year that I was turned, there was another alpha in town. He was killing people. I put him down.” Scott stares off through the windshield, and the happy-go-lucky kid of a few minutes ago was all but gone. Allison knew that look. The older hunters wore it all the time. Scott shakes his head “But I couldn’t get to him before he killed a lot of people, and nearly took Lydia with him.”

Allison taps her index finger on her lower lip, thoughts churning. “That explains why Lydia might have an anti-werewolf panic room. But if you killed the last alpha and your pack isn’t hunting, what’s Lydia have to be scared of now?” Allison shoots him a meaningful look. “Are you sure you actually killed him?”

Scott glares daggers. “For your information, being an alpha doesn’t transfer unless the previous alpha is dead. So I’m pretty sure I did the job right.”

“No need to get testy.” She pauses. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“It’s not something I’m proud to admit. If I had the choice, I wouldn’t have done anything differently—but still. It sticks with you.” He turns to her with a wry smile with no pleasure in it. “I guess this disqualifies me from the protection of your rules. I’ve killed someone.”

Allison is quiet for a minute. “He was killing people?” she asks. Scott nods. “Then you only did what I would have done any day of the week.” She puts the car in gear and pulls back into the street without another word. Scott is quiet as he stares out the window, but she thinks she catches a glimpse of a small, grateful smile on his lips.

They pull up to the hospital a few minutes later. “If anyone can make something out of this, it’s Stiles,” Allison says as they stroll through the bustle of the halls. “We’ll swap notes, he’ll have some sort of epiphany, we’ll figure out how to bring down this beastie and then ride off into the sunset. That’s how it always goes.”

“Sounds like you guys have it all figured out,” Scott says wryly, turning the handle to Stiles’s room.

The door opens on an empty room, the covers thrown off the bed and the disconnected IV tube hanging listlessly over the side. A hospital gown is balled up and tossed into the corner of the room, with a pair of the hospital socks thrown on top of it. The blaring of the television is a constant empty crackle.

Stiles and Erica are gone.

 


	3. some kind of way out of here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Erica investigate deeper into the mystery of what exactly is going on in Beacon Hills, but their line of questioning ends up putting everyone in danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my beta [Margokim](margotkim.tumblr.com) for her eternal patience and hard work. Rock on, buddy.
> 
> This work was written before season 3 came out, so it's based almost solely on the canon of seasons 1-2.

_3 hours earlier_

 

“What ‘cha doing?” Erica asks, straddling the back of a rolling office chair and pushing herself in an orbit around Stiles’s bed. He does his best to ignore her, but considering the fact that this is the eleventh time she’s asked that question it’s getting harder and harder. He guesses it was too much to hope that his life would never involve him snarking back and forth with someone who could easily kill him.

“I’m doing research,” Stiles says as he massages his temples. “The answer is not going to change just because you asked fifty times. If something exciting happens, I promise you’ll be the first to know. Well, the second. I’ll know first.” The wheels of the chair scrape as she pulls up beside his bed, craning her neck to get a look at what was on his screen. It’s an old police report from three years ago that Stiles has been going over with a fine tooth comb. Fat lot of good it’s done him. No matter how he does the math, all the facts won’t add up. It’s like freshman algebra all over again, but with marginally more death and destruction.

Erica lets her chin sink down onto the blankets, and Stiles is reminded ridiculously of a dog resting its head forlornly on the bed. Her eyes track the cursor as he scrolls through page after page of news files.

“Bored,” she announces.

Stiles laughs humorlessly. “So I gathered.”

But suddenly Erica sits up and leans forward to get a better look at the screen. Stiles shoots her a strange look, which she ignores. He’s pulled up a picture of an old animal killing, a deer with a tri-swirly symbol carved into its side.

“That’s a triskele,” Erica blurts out.

Stiles looks up. “How do you know that?”

“Derek has one tattooed on his back.”

“How do you know _that_?” Stile asks before he can help himself.

“The guy walks around shirtless 80% of the time. It’s hard to miss.” Stiles smirks in spite of himself, and Erica narrows her eyes. “We’re not dating, if that’s what you’re thinking. Derek has the emotional capacity of a rock when it comes to relationships. Some seriously damaged goods.”

“Okay, thank you for that confidential peek at the personal life of Derek Hale. Now here’s Stiles with the weather,” he says sarcastically. “You do realize how suspicious it is that the symbol found on a bunch of butchered animals is also tattooed onto the back of one of your betas.”

“It’s not like Derek has a monopoly on them. They’re some Celtic, mythological kind of thing.”

“Specifically a sign of the three realms, reincarnation, and the phases of the moon, I know,” Stiles mutters. Spewing off that kind of knowledge is just second nature these days. “But why is it showing up around here?”

“No idea,” Erica says with a shrug. “But to werewolves, they’re a symbol of revenge.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Derek’s gotta be harboring some pretty dark secrets to have a declaration of vengeance permanently inked onto his skin.”

She leans back in her chair and crosses her ankles beneath it. “Only the kind of secrets where his family was torched by hunters in that house your partner was snooping around in. I did tell you he was fucked up, right?”

After a second, Stiles forces his mouth into a bitter smile. Losing family is an all-too-sensitive issue with him, but he’s going to make it one of his priorities not to sympathize with a hyper-aggressive werewolf. “Look, I hate to pry, but are you _absolutely sure_ that your Derek isn’t the one on a murderous rampage around here? Because the facts aren’t doing much to suggest he’s anywhere near innocent.” Pointedly, he gestures down at his chest. The movement hurts.

“Trust me, we’d know.” Erica taps the side of her head. “We can sense that sort of thing. It’s hard to hide anything from your pack for long. I know you might not want to believe it, but Derek’s clean. The only person he plans on killing is the woman who killed his family.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Stiles says sarcastically. “As long as he’s only _planning_ on murdering someone I guess we can let him off the hook.” He pauses. “Who was it, anyways? The person he’s looking for.” It’s not like he thinks he might know her—he hasn’t met a whole lot of hunters to begin with. Not like there’s a hunter’s facebook page, or an annual convention where everyone gets together to tell stories about all the people who have died. So really, Stiles shouldn’t even have asked. But there’s some tiny little modicum of suspicion kicked up from the back of his mind; he doesn’t know what it means, but he can’t help but follow it.

“We don’t know who she is. She used fake names, a burner phone, no way of tracking her down. She hit town and stayed for just long enough to worm her way into Derek’s graces and flip open her lighter, and then she was gone. From what I understand, Derek tracked her for years and came up with nothing. Whoever she is, she’s good at what she does.” By the end there’s steel in Erica’s eyes as she recounts the Shakespearean tragedy that is Derek’s life. Stiles has to admit, that’s pretty rough. At least he had the luxury of having his vengeance carried out.

“Alright, so it’s not Derek,” he allows. “Lydia Martin is definitely up to something, but we have no way of knowing how deep she’s in until we hear back from Scott and Allison. There’s no apparent connections between victims, no witnesses left alive or cognoscente to interview—in short, we have jack shit,” he concludes, slamming his laptop closed in frustration. He hates feeling so useless, knowing that Allison is out there risking her life while he’s riding the pine and unable to put the pieces together. Which is the one thing he’s ever been actually good at.

 “Look,” Erica says with an arrogant toss of her hair, “Deaton warned us about people like you. I know what you do to our kind. But I am so very, very ready to see whatever it is that’s been killing people put into the ground. And if you guys are the means by which we reach that end, then I’m on board. So tell me what I can do to help.”

“I appreciate the touching speech,” Stiles says tiredly, “But what I need is more information to work with. Whoever’s doing this, they’re not leaving any loose ends. Anyone who could have helped us—friends, relatives, roommates—they all left town, disappeared, or were otherwise made mentally unavailable.” He chews the inside of his cheek. “All that’s left to me is the hard evidence, and the exact details I need for this case are the ones the police would never think to look for. Let alone write down in a report.”

Erica shrugs. “So why don’t we go have a look ourselves? Plenty of crime scenes to choose from.”

Stiles props his head up on his fist. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one _stopping_ me from escaping the hospital?”

“You’re fine,” Erica says, standing up abruptly. “Fine enough to go stare at some blades of grass or whatever it is we’ll be looking for. We’ll be back before they know we’re gone.”

“Oh, why’d you have to say that?” Stiles groans. “Irony now dictates that something has to get fucked up.”

Erica smiles at him. “You’re one weird dude. Now get out of that bed and let’s go do something dumb.”

Stiles pushes himself off the pillows carefully, waiting for the twinge of pain he knows will come. He still cringes when it does. Swinging his legs off the bed, he slowly pushes himself forward until his feet curl on the cold tile. Erica watches him closely but doesn’t push, ready to leap forward and save the day should Stiles pass out like a southern belle. With a surge of confidence Stiles hauls himself to his feet, and a second later ends up doubled over the side of his bed breathing hard.

“On second thought, maybe the detective work should wait a while,” he gasps. Derek’s claws are raking down his chest all over again, three searing lines that send lights dancing behind his eyes and vacuum the air from his lungs.

Until it stops. The pain drains away like water through a colander until there’s no sensation except a throbbing ache and the tingle of hypersensitive nerves. He takes a slow breath, waiting for it to come rushing back to him, but all he feels is a twinge. As he straightens up he realizes that there’s a soft hand resting in between his shoulder blades—Erica.

“Well that was weird,” he starts to say, until he sees the grimace on her face. He stares at her blankly. The lightbulb blinks on. “What did you do?”

“What I could,” she says tersely, squaring her shoulders and taking in a short breath.

“Okay, rephrase: how did you do that?” Stiles demands. “You took my pain, right? Is that a thing?”

“Most werewolves can do it,” Erica says, rubbing her chest with a wince. “Some can do it better; Scott’s the best I’ve seen, and Derek is fucking terrible at it. But I’m not bad at it, as you’re currently experiencing. Just don’t go running any marathons and we can go investigate whatever you want.”

Stiles probes at the bandages on his chest—it doesn’t feel good, but he can deal. “This is definitely a terrible idea in regards to my personal health.”

“Lying prone in a hospital bed is even worse,” Erica says lightly. “When whatever it is you’re hunting for realizes what you’re doing here, you’re going to be jumping right to the top of the kill list.”

She has a point. Stiles inclines his head. “Well when you put it that way. Let’s get out of here before I change my mind,” he says, grabbing the pile of his clothing from underneath the mattress where Allison had hidden it while she thought he was sleeping. If she had really wanted to keep him in bed she should have done a better job of it. Like cuffing him.

Stiles gingerly tugs on his clothing while Erica waits on the other side of the curtain, swishing it aside playfully from time to time but for the most part staying patient. The shirt is the hardest part, because even the cling of cotton feels like sandpaper on his skin. He grits his teeth and bears it. He’s had worse, he’s had worse.

“Sure hope you have a car,” he says as they slip past the front desk without raising so much as a nurse’s eyebrows.

“Something better,” Erica grins, and Stiles is really doesn’t like the sound of that. Sure enough, when they step out into the parking garage the first thing he sees is a vicious-looking motorcycle parked in a handicap space. Because of course she rides a frickin’ death machine. Where’s the fun in breaking out of a hospital to visit the site of a recent murder in a station wagon?

Erica walks right up to it and pulls out a pair of keys, turning to Stiles with bared teeth that he can’t really classify as a smile.

“Ready to roll?” she asks. Stiles glances around apprehensively.

“Where are the helmets?” he asks, knowing at the same time how futile the question is.

“Don’t worry, I’m a good driver,” she says, swinging her leg over the thin black frame of the bike. Shaking his head, Stiles slides onto the seat behind her and prays to whichever gods will listen that he doesn’t end up a red smear on the motorway. The chopper roars to life underneath him and purrs its way out of the parking garage.

 “We should go to the site of the last recorded crime,” Stiles says, his voice rising over the wind into Erica’s ear.

“The one from two weeks ago?”

“You remember where that is?”

She nods, and the bike eases forward with an antsy thrum.

The wind is cold on his face, and the jolting movements of the bike end up pressing him close to Erica’s back and sending shoots of pain through his body. He wraps his arms around her waist and bites back his yelps of pain. Showing weakness is not really his speed. She must have figured it out, though, because after an especially sharp turn he feels a sudden rush of relief. He doesn’t thank her, but his grip relaxes ever so slightly.

As they drive through the town Stiles notices a news crew standing on the sidewalk, a grim-faced reporter with a perfect helmet of long blonde hair speaking gravely into the camera. He doesn’t recognize the station logo on the side of their van. Word of Beacon Hills’ crisis must be reaching busier channels. Pretty soon they’d have a regular Gevaudan on their hands.

In about ten minutes they leave the town proper behind and the well maintained houses give way to concrete walls and graffiti. The building they’re looking for isn’t hard to find. It’s the only one standing in a block where the rest of the old warehouses had been demolished. When they pull up outside there’s still a piece of old crime scene tape caught on one of the door frames and drifting slightly in the breeze. It’s creepy as fuck.

The inside isn’t much better. It’s empty except for a few old pillars stripped down to the metal skeletons, branching up into the rusted rafters like iron trees. There are stains on the floor that Stiles tells himself can’t all possibly be from some gruesome murder, but that doesn’t stop his imagination from running with it. There’s a drain in the middle of the floor that looks darker than shadows should.

“They found the body here,” Erica says, gesturing towards a spot on the floor that before was no different but now screams with significance. Stiles kneels down beside it and runs his fingertips across the dirty floor, though he’s not really sure why. Standing up, he cringes and presses a palm to his chest. Sharp spikes of pain dance out like lightning bolts from the three gashes there. Erica steps forward and puts a hand on his elbow.

“You okay?” she asks.

Immediately the pain is funneled away, leaving only a faint tingle behind. He nods curtly and starts pacing the wide space, keeping his footsteps slow and gentle.

“So. Allison said you guys can’t smell anything around the crime scenes that might point us in the right direction.”

“It’s not just that. We can’t smell anything, period. Not even the mildew, or the chemicals they used to clean up the blood.”

Stiles takes a whiff. His nose might not be nearly as fine-tuned as a werewolf’s, but he has to admit that the lack of foul smells from this decrepit-ass building is weird. “What about outside the warehouse, can you smell anything there?”

Erica nods. “It’s like a curtain falls down as soon as I come inside, and suddenly there’s nothing there.” Stiles bobs his head in thought and mutters under his breath, tapping his fingers against his lips.

“So they wanted to hide the evidence. That would mean they’d want to put it near the body. But no, they didn’t just want to hide the evidence, they wanted to hide it from _werewolves_ , which means some heavy duty stuff, which means…” he rotates on the ball of his foot, eyes scanning the room. They skip over the rafters and empty floor, too small or obvious, and settle on the drain. Where else would they hide it? Well actually, there were a myriad of other places to tuck a charm away, but Stiles has a feeling about this one. No shadows should be that black. Crouching beside it, he peers down into the murky gloom just past the grate. It’s impossible to see anything down there.

“Hey, Erica,” he says, gesturing her over. She squats down beside him. “Put that super werewolf strength to good use and help me get this thing open.”

In one smooth motion Erica hooks her fingers into the grate and yanks it away, sending little flakes of concrete scattering across the floor. Stiles isn’t above saying that the display makes him a little jealous. But then he’s leaning down to get all up close and personal with the creepy hole in the ground, and he’s got bigger things to worry about than physical inadequacies.

“Here goes nothing,” he says a tad nauseously, and plunges his hand into the darkness. At this point it’s a blessing he can’t smell anything. His fingers feel over dry piping and what’s probably rat poop before brushing across something soft and yielding. He gets a hold of it and pulls, feeling it come loose in his hands as he lifts it into the light. It’s a small silk bag, pale purple in color, and he knows better than to open it. When it comes to magic, better to burn first and not bother asking any questions. It’s all confusing and dangerous as fuck.

And then, as he’s turning it over in his hand, he sees it. A set of three swirls originating from a single point, burned onto the outside of the bag like a brand. Well hello again. That had to mean something, even if he had no idea what.

“What is that?” Erica asks.

“This,” Stiles says, gingerly setting it down on the ground, “is a hexbag. Or something like it, at least. It has a bunch of nasty stuff inside—ground up baby bones, wing of rat, you get the gist—and contains the spell that’s repressing all the scents in this area.”

She nods her head, taking it in stride. “Alright. So how do we kill it?” Stiles grins and pulls out a lighter.

“Observe.” He touches the flame to the tip of the bag and jumps back when it catches, sending a burst of blue sparks dancing across the floor along with a quiet squeal, like air being slowly let out of a balloon. After a few frantic splutters, the spell crumbles in on itself into a blackened husk. Erica’s eyes widen.

“I can smell now,” Erica says, hauling a deep breath into her lungs. “I smell blood. That’s for sure. Some cops… and something else. It’s… weird. I can’t really place it.” She stiffens, taking a long drag of air. “Stiles.” There’s danger in the way she says his name.

“What is it,” he says quietly, taking a step closer to her.

“There’s something here,” she says. “I can smell it.”  She throws back her head and inhaled before her neck snaps up, her eyes wide. “It’s right outside.”

As if on cue, there’s a short, high whistle from somewhere outside. Movement flashes near the window, and sailing through in an inevitable arc is a bottle with something bright flickering at its mouth.

“Heads up!” Stiles cries, a split second before it hits the floor. The concussion sends him sprawling onto his back, his chest erupting in pain. There’s a warm, hungry crackling, followed by a second crash, and a third. He rolls onto his side and curls up with his face smashed into his knees and his hands over his head. Something feels wrong. Maybe the fact that he just slammed his skull into solid concrete. He can’t hear much over the ringing in his ears, but he thinks he hears Erica shouting and an animal snarl.

Cracking his eyes open, he’s met with fire. The Molotov cocktails had caught and spread, eating up the dust and concrete in a way that normal fire shouldn’t have. The smoke already burns in his eyes, and he cranes his head around looking for Erica.

A shape moves beyond the fire, a dark hulking one and a smaller, faster one twirling and dancing like a mirage through the rippling flames. Forcing his head up further, Stiles makes out Erica in her wolflike form, claws brandished and fangs flashing as she swipes and dives. Her attacker, however, Stiles can’t quite make out; just that it’s big, bigger than anything should have a right to be, and that it knocks Erica across the room with a swipe of one massive forearm. He tries to shout after her but his lungs contract from the smoke, leaving him gasping.

His chest is raw agony, the taste of blood coats his tongue, but he knows he has to keep moving. Staggering to his feet through the constant pain, Stiles fights his way through the fire and smoke to where he last saw Erica standing. His knife is in his hand, for all the good it will do; he can’t see a damn thing through the black haze in the air. Off to his right he hears a low roar that isn’t the groan of heating metal. A pair of red eyes eight feet off the ground bore straight into his. A second later they’re gone, the shadow they belong to loping off through the smoke with a smaller form slung over its shoulder. Erica. It took Erica.

He tries to yell after her, but he hardly has enough air to breathe. The heat from the flames washes over him, not close enough yet to be painful but steadily getting there. All he can see is a swath of orange and yellow, when his eyes are clear enough to see anything at all. Well great. He’s going to die here after all, and it won’t even be on a hunt. He’d be broiled like a steak on the barbeque just like any normal civy. No hero’s death for Stiles Stillinski. Just fire.

And it’s somewhere in the middle of that orgy of self-pity that a dark shape comes tumbling out of the haze towards him. Stiles has his knife up and ready to slash when something clicks in his brain. Those ice-blue eyes had been seared into his memory. He’d recognize them anywhere.

“ _Move,_ ” Derek shouts over the roar, grabbing fistfuls of Stiles’s jacket and hauling him backwards. Stiles barely has time to react when there’s a crash from above, and a tangle of metal and fire crumples in stunning HD slow-motion into the spot that Stiles had just been standing.

Stiles is reeling, full of smoke and fear and feeling like he should really be stabbing something right about now. The pain in his chest cedes to adrenaline, or else he probably wouldn’t’ be standing at all. His hands have found their way to burrow into the folds of Derek’s coat, while the werewolf’s are still tangled in the collar of Stiles’s jacket. The air is too thick to breathe, let alone to see through, and without that contact Stiles wouldn’t have even known there was another person suffocating just a foot away. Stiles hauls Derek to the floor in a crouch, remembering from somewhere that you’re supposed to stay low in a fire because the smoke rises. He should probably be wondering why he’s helping this man. He figures there will be plenty of time for that when they’re not actively dying anyways. He slips his knife into the back of his pants and hopes he won’t need it on short notice.

“Where’s Erica?” Derek gasps, a disembodied voice near Stiles’s shoulder.

“Gone!” he manages, his voice doing weird and painful things in his throat. “Something took her!” Derek swears between coughing fits, his eyes raking the flames with frantic terror. Stiles can feel his weight swaying, his own grip on Stiles loosening. Clearly Derek Hale is not a fan of fire.

“Oh no you don’t, man,” Stiles shouts, shaking him violently. “Don’t you even think that if you check out now I’ll be carrying your heavy ass out of this building. You either snap to or end up deep fried.” That gets Derek back on the mortal plane. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Stiles yells, his voice nearly blocked out by a scream of metal twisting and snapping. In a matter of minutes, seconds even, the warehouse ceiling is going to become much better acquainted with the floor. Stiles would rather not be here when that happens.

“Which way is out?” Stiles asks, pulling Derek’s ear close to him. There’s a moment of indecision, which doesn’t exactly fill Stiles with confidence, then Derek tugs him off into the smoke. They move in an awkward stooped run, and for all Stiles knows they could be three feet from the exit or fifty. All he can do is follow the pull of Derek’s grip and hope to God he’s got some kind of werewolf mojo leading him on.

When they finally hit something solid, for a second Stiles think they’re saved. But of course, that would be way too convenient to be his life. Derek wrenches at the door handle, but Stiles can tell it’s useless; something’s blocking it from outside.

“They locked us in,” he shouts, banging his fist on the wood ineffectually. The heat is worse now, baking into his clothes and slicking his skin with sweat. The smoke is clearer near the windows, clear enough to see at least, and Stiles is a bit unnerved by the raw terror he sees on Derek’s face in that moment. So much for evil nazi werewolf robot. In that moment, Derek looks like a scared kid. But you know, a scared kid who just tried to murder him. So Stiles isn’t feeling too flush with sympathy.

“Hey,” Stiles says, kneeling down close to him and shaking his shoulder. “Snap out of it. We’ve gotta try the windows.”

“They’re ten feet off the floor,” Derek says bitterly. His hair is plastered to his forehead in a tangled black mat.

“Oh yeah, you’re right. Guess we’ll just die, then,” Stiles retorts, grabbing the man and forcing him to his feet. “If you’re set on that option, fine, but the least you can do is give me a boost.” Derek pulls himself together for long enough to nod, lacing his fingers together into a stirrup that Stiles levers himself off of, hands feeling up the rough wall for the gap he knows is there, has to be there. His fingers slide over empty space, and he grips the windowsill like the last hope that it is.

“I got it!” he shouts over his shoulder, focusing on hauling his weight onto the edge. He’s suddenly and infinitely grateful for his decision to join Allison in her daily push-up routine. She just couldn’t seem to stop saving his life in one way or another.

Stiles gets his chest through the window, then one leg. Smoke gushes past him, but for the first time in what feels like forever he can _breathe_. It’s so tempting to just slide the rest of the way out and relish that feeling for the rest of his life. But something makes him stop, and glance back over his shoulder into the inferno.

Derek is in a heap near the door, pressing as far away from the flames as he can get without phasing through the wall. The smoke is so thick, but Stiles can see him look up. His blue eyes are dull. His face is slack. He stares at Stiles like he’s the last thing he’ll ever see, which hey, is a possibility.

The smoke closes up, and Derek is gone. With one last push of his screaming muscles, Stiles throw himself out the window.

He falls in a tangle of limbs and pain, landing on the soft grass. His heart might literally be beating through the gashes in his chest, but it’s the best Stiles has ever felt after falling ten feet out of a burning building.

Standing is almost too much for him, but he manages to lever his feet under himself and push up the side of the building. The world spins and fades around him as the smoke in his lungs competes with the open wounds on his chest, but he manages to take a few limping steps away. The building roars behind him like a living thing, the heat from the flames still licking up the back of his neck. He grits his teeth and takes another step. It’s not his problem. Derek tried to kill him. He should just walk away.

And then, because he is a) an idiot and b) can’t leave well enough alone, he stops. The door they were struggling to open, and against which Derek is currently reclining to await his immediate and eternal rest, is just a few feet away. The handle is a warped and twisted to stop it from opening, and Stiles doesn’t want to think about the kind of strength required to do that to metal, but from this side Stiles can see how easy it would be to give it a short turn—just a few inches—and allow the door to open. It’s exactly the kind of detail he wishes he wouldn’t notice.

Stiles swears under his breath. This is so stupid. He grabs the handle and turns.

The door falls open under Derek’s weight, sending a semi-unconscious werewolf spilling out at Stiles’s feet. His eyes are closed, but his chest heaves with coughs and desperate gasps for fresh air. Stiles stumbles away, batting the smoke away from his face. That’s the extent of his heroics today. The only person he’s fit enough to drag away from a burning building is himself. The ball’s in Derek’s court now.

The rear of a black car which Stiles assumes is Derek’s looms in front of him; he flops onto the back and has himself a good, long cough. For a while he just lays there, trying to remember how to breathe, before sitting up and looking around. His chest is one big spot of _fucking ow,_ and he says a silent prayer of thanks to adrenaline for helping him get this far. The world is a blur of color, but the warehouse is a frenzy of heat. The ringing in his ears has died down to the point where he can fully appreciate the furious roar of the flames. There are crashes from inside that suggest they got out just in time.

Derek limps over to the car, one hand on his stomach and his face smeared with soot. He stops to bend over the trunk, resting his head on the back of his arms and wheezing for breath. It’s hard not to notice the fact that he’s shaking, but it’s not that hard not to comment on it. His super werewolf healing powers are already putting him better off than Stiles.

“So,” Stiles wheezes. “Derek Hale. What a surprise. No really, I mean it, I’m totally surprised right now. Weren’t you trying to kill me just yesterday? Make up your mind, dude.” Derek shoots him an exasperated look, but hasn’t recovered enough to make anything of it. Despite the fact that this is the man who tried to kill him less than twenty-four hours ago, Stiles can’t help but laugh. He’s not entirely operating on all cylinders at the moment.

“Luckily for you I’m also incapacitated, so we can postpone the whole deathmatch showdown thing until I catch my breath.” Stiles really shouldn’t be talking so much when his throat feels like someone just made him swallow a cubic yard of sandpaper, but he can’t seem to help himself. Derek takes one more gasp of air before locking his gaze back on Stiles.

“Where’s—Erica,” he wheezes. Stiles feels something black and ugly unfurling in the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know. We lifted the spell around the crime scene, she smelled something, they frickin’ _Molotov cocktailed us_ …” He stops to catch his breath. “I saw her fighting with something in the flames. It was big, around eight feet, red eyes, strong enough to throw her across the room. It got away before I could see anything else, and it took her with it.”

Derek swears, banging his fists on the hood of his car. Stiles can relate; he’s currently in the process of shutting down any and all Erica-related emotions clouding up his head. Repression might not be the healthiest of techniques, but damn does it get the job done. He can’t afford to think about other people like that in this line of work. Allison was the sole exception. He takes all the anger and worry and fear that circles around Erica’s name and pushes it behind a door. It’ll stay safe there until he needs it.

Derek doesn’t seem to be doing so well. He’s still shaking slightly, the fingers that wipe at the grime on his face slip and tremble like they’re not his own. He must notice that Stiles is staring because he quickly turns away.

“Get in the car,” he says. “We need to get back to the house.”

“Yeah,” Stiles snorts. “Like I’m just going to hop in the white van with a guy who put me in the hospital less than twenty-four hours ago. Seems likely.” Derek’s face goes dangerously blank. He straightens up and takes a step closer to Stiles.

The knife is in his hand before he even needs to think about it. He’s not out of adrenaline yet, and even though the tip moves in tiny little circles with the shaking of his hand, he’s ready to cut something. “I don’t think so, cupcake. You stay where you are, unless you’d rather be six feet lower.” Derek stares at the blade like it’s an alien artifact.

“You’re not going to stab me,” he says. Stiles laughs.

“Well, it worked pretty well last time,” he says. Derek’s jaw twitches; clearly someone isn’t used to his bullshit being called. He forces himself into something resembling calm, but Stiles can see the anger darkening his face.

“Why do you think they took Erica and burned away all the evidence from under your feet?” he says, spitting the words out like bitter seeds. “They know we’re on to something, and they’re stepping up their game. That means we’re all in danger. We need to regroup before they pick any more of us off, and then work on finding Erica.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “And you think I’m just going to go along with that? Working with Erica was one thing. She was actually pretty cool, in a terrifying werewolf kind of way. The best I can say about you is that you drive a nice car, and are probably a psychopath.”

Derek’s face plunges into the deepest frown Stiles has ever seen on anything other than an Easter Island head. “Scott’s put his trust in a petulant child. I wish I could say I was surprised!”  

“Yeah, well looks who’s talking. At least I’m not a fucking monster!”

“You’re unbelievable!”

“You carved me open with your fingernails and put me in the hospital! I’m pretty sure that means I win this one!”

They glare at each other in tense, testosterone-y silence until the wail of sirens creeps up in the distance. So much for hanging around. Stiles pointedly wrenches open the door to Derek’s car and flinging himself down on the seat. He crosses his arms over his chest and sets his jaw, cranking his bitchface up to full blast and directing it through the windshield. Plants wither under its intensity. When Derek slides into the driver’s seat and glances over him, he snorts derisively and starts the car without a word, taking off down the street at speeds that are probably unsafe and definitely illegal.

They drive for five minutes in tense silence before Stiles breaks it by nearly coughing up a lung. Derek’s eyes dart between him and the road.

“Do I need to pull over?” he asks, any possible ounce of courtesy wrung out of his voice.

 “I’m not going to yak in the car if that’s what you’re worried about,” Stiles gets out between racking heaves.

Derek looks irritated, which is no real change. It’s like his face is wired into a permanent scowl. Not that it’s a bad look, Stiles thinks. Derek’s one of those people who only gets more attractive when they’re smeared with dirt. Periodically the werewolf lets go of the wheel to wipe the grime off his face, or more accurately to push it around.

He seems to sense Stiles staring at him and glances at him out of the corner of his eyes, eyes flicking down to the spot under Stiles’s t-shirt where his claws had opened him up the night before.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” he says suddenly. “Back in the motel. You were… pretty good.”

“I am in fact a hunter, as everyone seems rather fond of forgetting,” Stiles snaps. “It comes with the job.” Seriously, what does he have to do to make the fact more obvious? Wear fifty layers of plaid and a necklace of monster ears?

“Oh, so you just signed up and got combat skills downloaded directly into your brain?” Derek’s eyebrows practically disappear into his hairline. “Sorry, for a second there I forgot we were living in the Matrix.”

That actually makes Stiles laugh. In a mostly angry way. “Well aren’t you Mister Sassy. I can respect that. Side note: complimenting someone on beating you up is not normal human behavior. Just FYI.”

Derek looks flustered, in an angry kind of way. “Most people don’t do so well against me in a fight. I was just curious.”

“Just jealous is more like it,” Stiles says, letting his head fall back to hit the seat rest. The car smells like worn leather. “You can thank my dad for that. He taught me most of what I know.”

Derek snorts. “What, he just let you turn yourself into some kind of supernatural child solider?”

“Not exactly. Also, none of your business.” Stiles pointedly looks out the window, willing the conversation to end. Which really shouldn’t be that hard, all he has to do is stop talking. Actually, yeah, that’s pretty hard. But Derek seems to take the hint and drives on in silence.

Something occurs to Stiles which overrides his bitter silence. “How did you know how to find us?” he asks suddenly. “In the warehouse. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going, and you were there almost as soon as trouble started.” Derek looks uncomfortable.

“I don’t know, I just… did. I got into the car and suddenly I just knew something bad was happening.”

“Was your spidey sense tingling?” Stiles says sarcastically, because he just can’t help himself. “Did the cries of people in need send you running?”

Derek scowls. Or maybe his face doesn’t change. Scowling seems to be a constant thing with him.

“I just knew I had to go somewhere,” Derek says. “I got in the car and I knew where to drive. And when I saw the warehouse I knew I had to go inside.”

“Maybe you sensed Erica being hurt through your weird wolf telepathy thing.” Stiles starts to suggest. “…Except that we didn’t know we were in trouble until about a minute before I was halfway deep-fried, and we were out in the middle of nowhere. I take it you weren’t in the neighborhood?”

Derek shakes his head. Stiles isn’t exactly a werewolf expert, except he’s probably one of the closest things you could find. And he’s never heard of any kind of precog connection. But then again, weird magic is the item of the day in this town.

A thought crosses his mind. Moving as little as possible to avoid the mess of pain waiting on his chest, he leans over and reaches a hand into the pocket of Derek’s jacket.

Derek glances down in surprise and starts to twist away. “What are you—”

Stiles pulls out a small purple baggy and dangles it in Derek’s face. “Hex bag. This one's gone dead—meaning it did its job. Someone put you in that building, and my money’s on Lydia.” He flips it around. The same triskele stares up at him that was branded on the other bag.

Derek frowns. “How would she have gotten it into my pocket?”

Stiles decides that the line of interrogation about mysteriously recurring symbols can wait until backup arrives. He slips the used-up charm into his jacket pocket. “Well, mind-wiping seems to a favorite of hers. She probably walked up and gave it to you.”

There’s a pause. Suddenly Derek’s face hardens, and the engine thrums all the harder as the car accelerates.

“Woah, woah, what’s the deal?” Stiles cries, his fingers digging into the armrests.

Derek shakes his head. “I’ve been at the house all day. Lydia must have found me there.”

“Yeah, so? It’s not like your home address is a secret.”

“So the deal is that Boyd and Isaac have been there the whole time too. They must have been there when Lydia showed up. And they didn’t come to the fire with me.”

Stiles allows a brief second for the gravity of that to sink in. Then he does something he should have done a lot sooner and pulls out his phone to punch in Allison’s number. She’s called him three times already, and he’s not looking forward to listening to the messages she’s left. He knows that no matter how angry she is, she’ll come and help if he needs it. And it would seem he definitely does.

Derek glances at him out of the corner of his eye, his jaw set. “What are you doing?”

“Utilizing the miracle of modern technology,” Stiles shoots back. The line opens up with a hiss of static.

“ _Where the hell did you go?_ ”

“Calm down Allison, I’m fine—”

“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with your voice?”

Stiles sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was a thing. I’m fine. Where are you and the fantastic furball?”

“In the Jeep, looking for your sorry ass. Oh, by the way, your peg on Lydia was totally right. There is something seriously freaky going on with her, probably magical but nothing I’ve seen before. Now where the hell are you?”

“I’m with Derek. No, he’s not trying to kill me at the moment. He needs you and Scott to get to the Hale house about five minutes ago.”

“You’re with _Derek_? Where’s Erica?”

“Just hurry,” he says, flipping his phone shut before Allison can push the matter. Erica is not something he is qualified to deal with right now. Stiles knows that cutting the emotions out of his heart, stopping himself from caring about people before he can even start, are not the kinds of things he should be proud of. But damn if they don’t make it easier to handle the collateral damage.

 

 

 

 

When Scott and Allison pull up outside the Hale house they find the Camaro parked on the grass, her doors flung open and the lights still on. In the rich reddish light of late evening the house looks more ominous than ever, fire-colors playing across the dark grey wood. She wastes no time reflecting on that imagery, vaulting up the steps after Scott and skidding to a halt in the decrepit living room.

The first thing she sees is Stiles, kneeling on the floor in front of the couch, his head leaning intently over something. Derek stands behind him, but Allison can’t see his face—his arms are crossed over his chest, his nails biting into the fabric of his shirt. She fights down the swell of anger, the drive to pull out her crossbow and put a bolt in his back. Time enough for that later.

“Stiles,” she says, and her partner’s head snaps up. His face is streaked with black powder, his eyes red-rimmed and glazed. There’s a blossom of red on his shirt where his wound has seeped through. She takes a step forward, her mouth opening to let loose a torrent of demands and accusations seething behind her teeth. It’s then that she sees what, or more accurately who, is lying on the couch. Boyd, his eyes staring straight ahead, his arm draped lifelessly onto the floor. Stiles’s fingers are pressed into his neck.

“What happened?” Scott’s voice is a low shiver in the air. Allison finds her own words are gone.

“He’s in some kind of coma. Lydia’s work,” Stiles says, removing his fingers from Boyd’s pulse to gesture to an armchair across the room. Isaac is sprawled there, his head lolled back to bare his neck and his eyes wide. Scott’s by his side in a heartbeat, pressing his palm to his forehead and gently clasping his hand.

“We found them like this.” Derek’s voice is a taut as a piece of razor wire. He’s covered in what Allison figures is soot as well, and his skin underneath is drained pale. “We were too late.”

After a moment Scott looks up. “There’s nothing you could have done,” he says quietly. Distress is written all over his face but his voice remains steady. Allison doesn’t think for one second that he’s as calm as he seems.

Stiles is shaking his head. “They split us all up. Each of us in pairs, easy enough to pick off. They must have been watching us for a while, waiting for their chance.”

Allison sinks down beside Stiles and brushes a speck of ash off his jacket. She doesn’t comment on the way his voice scrapes out of his throat like metal on asphalt, or the subtle shaking in his fingertips. Her face stays calm because this is what he needs right now. “Stiles, talk to me. What happened to you and Erica?”

His eyes shift to focus on her, and something seems to click into place. “We went to go investigate one of the old crime scenes,” he says. “Someone was waiting for us there. Burned it down. Took Erica while I was in the flames. Derek pulled me out.”

Allison shoots Derek a sharp look, which he ignores. Whatever his game is, all she knows is that she doesn’t like it.

“What can we do?” Allison asks, because the only direction to go now is forward and she can’t stand being here with Stiles looking like that and the betas staring at her and the painful look in Scott’s eyes. She needs to act.

“We take them to Deaton,” Scott says at last. “Maybe he can help them, or at least look after them. Then,” he says, something shifting behind his eyes that Allison doesn’t like, “we find Lydia.”

“Hang on,” Allison says as Scott tugs Isaac’s limp body over his shoulder. “You can’t just go running after her. Half your pack was here when she showed up and left presumably without a scratch on her. What makes you think it will be any different this time?”

“Because Lydia made a serious mistake coming here and attacking my pack,” Scott says, carrying Isaac out the door. “She made the mistake of seriously pissing me off.”

“Great,” Stiles says, his voice cracking ever so slightly, and when Allison turns back to him she sees that he’s practically swaying on his feet. “We’ll just go Hulk out on her, then? And then everything will be fine, right? You think that’s how this will go down?”

Scott and Derek ignore him, each hauling a beta out to Derek’s car. Allison strides after them, Stiles trailing aimlessly behind her. “Scott,” she says, catching his arm as he finishes positioning Isaac beside Boyd in the back seat. Their bodies lean into each other unconsciously, like two lumps of soft clay melding together. Scott looks at her, and his eyes are red. The color makes something in Allison’s stomach lurch, some lever in the bottom of her brain screaming to back away, but against all instincts she tightens her grip.

“You know this isn’t the right move,” she says urgently. “You’ll be risking your lives for no reason. Walking into a fight with a witch totally unprepared is the kind of thing that will get you and your beta killed.”

“I know you’re probably used to calling the shots,” Scott says, his voice deceptively conversational as he wrenches his arm out of her grip. “But this just got more personal than you would believe. So back off.” He slams the back door shut and walks around to the driver’s side. Derek has already slid into the passenger seat, his eyes unfocused until he senses the look Allison is sending his way. He only holds her gaze for a moment before he turns to stare at the soot-smeared fingers clenched in his lap. Her own hands are balled into fists at her sides, but there’s nothing for her to lash out at this time.

Scott yanks the car door open, and pauses. Allison stares at him from across the car, all the vitriol she could be spitting at him searing her tongue. She holds it back. “We need to stick together. It’s the only way we stand a chance.”

Scott just shakes his head, cold fury written all over the blankness of his face. “We’re going. You can come with us, or not. Your choice.” With that, he slides into the car, starts the engine, and peels off the front lawn with a huff of exhaust. Allison watches the taillights until they’re swallowed up by the trees, flickering between the trunks like they’re beckoning her after them. As if she has a choice.

“Damn it,” she hisses, turning on her heel. That stupid werewolf was going to get himself killed, and here she was throwing herself right after him. But she wasn’t capable of staying out a fight, even when it was the only sane thing to do. She wasn’t built for the sidelines.

“Let’s move,” she calls out to Stiles, jogging over to the Jeep and turning the keys where they were left in the ignition. The Jeep might have had better storage, but the Camaro was undoubtedly faster. They’d have to leave now if they had a hope in catching up. Allison digs under her feet for the reassuring press of metal from her guns, checks the knife in her boot and on her belt, turns around to start backing out—and then realizes that her passenger isn’t in the car.

 Stiles is standing on the porch, half his weight leaning on one of the charred banisters. He’s normally pretty pale, but the skin she can see underneath the streaks of black is practically bloodless. She can see the trembling in his shoulders from here.

“Stiles?” she calls out, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. He looks up, comprehension dawning on his face. He steps forward. A second later he’s on the floor.

“Shit!” Allison yells, diving out of the car to crash to her knees by Stiles’s side. His eyes are half-closed and rove around without seeing. When Allison grabs the side of his face to steady him his skin feels clammy and cold. He’s not looking good in any sense of the word.

“Stiles, talk to me bud. Can you hear me? Stiles.” She lightly slaps the side of his face, trying to ignore the shaking in her hands. “Come on man, don’t do this. Just give me something here.”

He groans wordlessly. Then his eyes close entirely.

“Shit,” Allison repeats, because it seems appropriate right now. For a second her eyes lock on to the end of the road where Scott and Derek just disappeared to; she turns back to Stiles, prone on the grass. A flutter of panic fights its way out of her stomach. Scott or Stiles. She can’t help them both.

She hauls Stiles into the Jeep and takes off for the motel. The wolves are on their own.

 

 

 

 

It’s incredibly dark outside. Allison sits on the edge of her bed and stares at the windows, the night pressing against them like water in an aquarium. She doesn’t move much, and she doesn’t sleep. The soft thrum of her computer keeps her company, which has sat untouched on the covers beside her with the cursor blinking placidly in an empty search bar of Google for the past three hours. Other than that, the only sound in the room is the quiet rasp of Stiles’s sleeping breathing from the bed a few feet away.

The bedside light is on, but Stiles is dead to the world. His chest rises and falls almost peacefully, but for the layer of bloodied gauze stretched over it. The remains of the fire are still obvious in the scratchiness of his snores, the faint smell of soot that still lingers on the air around him. She’d propped up his feet on a few pillows because her mother told her that’s what you were supposed to do, though she can’t remember why. A wet paper towel had taken care of most of the black gunk on his face, but his skin is still washed out and fragile. He looks like she feels, and she’s pretty sure he’ll feel a hell of a lot worse as soon as he wakes up. The sad part is, this is the first time Allison can remember him sleeping the night through in a long time.

She watches him breathe. She’s been doing so since they crashed in the motel room at sundown. Empirically she knows that he’ll probably be fine; he’s had a lot worse. But something keeps her from turning away, the cold gut feeling that as soon as she isn’t looking the breathing will stop.

They’ve been in Beacon Hills for two days. In that time she’s nearly had her throat torn out on two separate occasions, and Stiles…well. Things hadn’t been so bad since she hunted with her family. Now Scott’s people are going missing as well, and she doubts it’s a coincidence that this is all happening so soon after she and Stiles hit town. And for all that danger and mayhem, they’re still hardly any closer to stopping Lydia and whatever else that’s been tearing this town apart. 

She grinds her teeth as her eyes trail back over the blank and accusing computer screen. Research is not her best subject. She has no idea where to look, or even where to start. They’ve been through every record this town has ever kept, and it’s gotten them next to nowhere. Scott and Derek might be on to something, sure, but she wouldn’t know what until they met her back at the motel. The only thing to do is wait. And Allison despises waiting.

It’s 5am: some form of news must be coming on soon. She grabs the remote control and flicks the TV on, turning down the volume in the off chance it might wake Stiles up. Sure enough, one of the local channels is reporting on the rising cost of gas in the area. Allison sits back and forces herself to tune out. Sleep might not be happening, but her brain can’t take much more.

“This just in—we’re getting reports of yet another brutal animal attack from the outskirts of town last night—” Allison’s eyes snap open and she bumps up the volume. So much for tuning out.

“Police have just released information on the latest in a string of bloody killings which has gripped our town these past few months,” the reporter is saying. “A body was found near the edge of the woods by a trucker driving through the area. It is believed that the victim was out after the police-enforced curfew, although no vehicle has been recovered in the surrounding area. According to eyewitness reports, the corpse was found in a tree above the road, only discovered by the blood which fell onto the trucker’s windshield as he drove underneath.” Allison can hear the ripple of sensationalism in her voice. “Police have said that the body is extremely mutilated, and they are falling back on dental records and the public’s help in order to identify this latest victim. Please, make sure all your family members are home and accounted for. Missing persons should be reported to the Beacon Hills police department immediately.”

Allison sits back, her heart pounding in her chest. Could it be Scott? She thought he could take care of himself, but she had also thought that Stiles could take care of himself, and look where he ended up. If it was Derek—well. Apparently he had saved Stiles’s life, but that didn’t put him in her good books. She wouldn’t waste any tears on him.

With a stiff sigh she leans back onto the pillows and forces all her attention into the next segment, where they interview a member of the sheriff’s office on whether or not they should be calling in reinforcements to stop the carnage. She can’t help but smile wryly. Little do they know that the reinforcements are already here.

By the time dawn breaks, Allison has gone through another four hours of news and left Scott a colorful assortment of phone messages. Still no word. With nothing else to do that doesn’t involve sitting still, Allison scoops up an armful of clothing and makes for the bathroom. She’s got a backlog of weird stains to work through, and plenty of energy to do it.

It’s seven in the morning when there’s finally a knock at the door. Wiping her soapy wet hands on her pants, Allison sprints out of the bathroom and wrenches the door open, a pit of rage building in her stomach. She would never have left Stiles in the wind for this long, and she does not appreciate being sidelined.

“Do you realize how long we’ve been waiting for—” Her voice dies in her throat.

“Hey baby girl,” Kate Argent says, a wicked grin splitting her face. “Expecting someone?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be updated next Wednesday! Hopefully before 11:55 >.>


	4. ladders 'bout to fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Kate arriving on the scene, Allison and Stiles suddenly find themselves keeping the kinds of secrets that get people killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well guys, it's finally here. I have to apologize for the lateness of this most recent update--I completely forgot that I would be moving back to college at the end of the week when it was supposed to go up, and things have been so crazy during the last days of summer and the first days of classes that I couldn't find the time to sit down and edit this chapter like I wanted to. So once again, sorry to make you guys wait!
> 
> In a similar vein, the fact that school is starting again means I will have a lot less free time on my hands. As a result, I am moving the posting day to Saturday from this point on, so that I'll theoretically have the day to do any last-minute work I might have. I'll do my best to stick to it, but because I'll be juggling classes and homework there's a possibility the updates might come late again. 
> 
> And last but not least: as I'd mentioned before, this whole work is actually already written from start to finish. But as I'm doing my rounds of edits, I've found myself making changes to some sections that will result in more bigger changes throughout the rest of the story. For example, I had to re-write the majority of this chapter, and will probably be doing all of the next one from scratch. This is good news if you want more Smoke Signals, because it means I might end up surpassing my original estimate of 8 chapters. As you might guess, this also means it will take more time for me to write and edit as opposed to just edit, but I'm confident the changes I'm making are all for the better. 
> 
> TLDR: Updates may come slower in the future, but fear not, they will not stop! Thanks to everyone who's reading this story and to my majestic beta [Margo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim). You guys keep me going!

Family is simple. That’s what Allison used to think, at least—what she was raised to believe. Family meant the guarantee of love, of loyalty, of a hand on your shoulder and a back against your own. You didn’t ask questions when your family asked for a favor. You didn’t even think about turning them down. Allison had never been good at the whole “blind obedience” thing. Which probably helps explain why she hasn’t seen any of her family in years. Reunions are extra awkward when everyone’s last memory of you is a note on the bed and a significant amount of ammunition gone from the gun locker.  

Yet here, in her typically impossible way, is Kate Argent, lounging in the door to Allison’s hotel room like it’s only been a week. She’s cut her hair since the last time they’ve seen each other, the blonde fringe scraping against her neck like the blade of a guillotine. She’s got her thumbs hooked in her belt loops and a grin on her face, a toothpick clenched inexplicably between her teeth in a way that should be ridiculous but, as usual, just looks cool. Allison, on the other hand, feels like someone’s just punched her in the chest.

In the face of Allison’s continued slack-jawed silence, Kate holds her arms out from her sides and scrunches up her shoulders. “Can I at least get a ‘hi auntie’?”

“Kate,” Allison manages, the words sounding strangled even to her. She doesn’t step forward, or open the door any wider.  

Kate winces playfully. “Ouch. I know you don’t like surprises, but I was hoping for a bit of a warmer welcome than that.” She pulls out her toothpick and tosses it aside before yanking Allison into a hug. “C’mere, you.”

Kate feels solid and familiar, especially the press of her hidden gun in her waistband. Kate’s arms squeezes her shoulder’s in a death grip; even physical affection always ends up a competition with her. There’s a strange smell on her clothes that only makes Allison’s head spin faster. The only coherent thought she can latch onto is simple: Kate can’t know. About Scott, about Stiles laying bedridden just ten feet away, about the fact that they’re working with werewolves. Allison doubts that even the code could protect Scott’s pack from Kate once she realizes what they are.

Kate peels back and finally gets to appreciate the raw shock Allison is quickly trying to wipe from her face. Her head tilts in a question. “Cat got your tongue?”

 Allison shakes her head to clear it. “What are you doing here?”

Kate rolls her eyes. “So demanding. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Kate, I haven’t seen you in years,” Allison says, the practical part of her brain taking over again. “Why here, and why now?”

The change in Kate’s demeanor is subtle enough, but Allison sees it instantly. The smile lines by her eyes disappear. She regards Allison more shrewdly. “Could be I was watching the news and caught the story about what a slaughterhouse this place has become. I remembered you guys were working the area, and thought you could use a hand.”

“That’s…very thoughtful,” Allison says. She’s not denying that Kate put thought into it. Just maybe not the right thoughts. “But maybe that’s not such a great idea. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you stayed here to help us while they needed you elsewhere.”

Kate raises her eyebrows. “You sure about that? No offense hon, but you look like shit.” She smoothes down a wisp of hair currently trying to escape Allison’s head before leaning forward conspiratorially. “I take it this town’s giving you a bit more trouble than you thought?”

“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Allison says, a little more forcefully than she had intended. Kate widens her eyes dramatically.

“Alright Allison, no offense. Where is the other half of ‘we’ anyways?” Kate moves to step past her into the hotel room.

“He’s asleep,” Allison says quickly as she moves to block her path. Her heart pounds in her throat—if Kate sees Stiles in the haze of blood-loss and exhaustion he currently inhabits, she’ll have a lot more questions than Allison is confident she can answer.

Kate’s eyes narrow, her smile never faltering for an inch. Allison can see the gears turning in her head, taking her from surprise to suspicion to resolve. “What have you got in there that you don’t want me to see, Allison?”

“Nothing,” Allison says. The silence between them goes on for too long. No brilliant excuse or misdirection bursts into Allison’s head—all she can do is stand there like her teeth are nailed together, and wait for Kate to get impatient.

But then, from the room behind her, there’s the sound of a weak cough. “It’s alright, Allison,” Stiles says. “You can let her in.”

Kate raises her eyebrows. “Well there you have it.” She steps past Allison without waiting for another invitation, flicking on the lights as she goes. Allison follows closely after with her heart in her throat. When she shuts the door it feels like all the air is sealed out of the room, but she squares her shoulders and hurries to Stiles’s bedside. He’s managed to prop himself up on the headboard, the blankets draped over his legs and his hands folded over them. The worst of the damage isn’t obvious—his shirt is smeared with blood and soot, but the gashes themselves are hidden. There’s no hiding that some serious shit went down, and that Stiles got the worst of it.  

Kate’s body language shifts as she takes in Stiles’s condition. The line of her back is suddenly straighter, her eyes suddenly just a little brighter. She knows there’s danger here. More importantly, she knows there’s prey.

“What the hell happened to you, kiddo?” she asks, like this is a normal conversation they’re about to have.

Stiles gives her a weak grin. “Cut myself shaving,” he says.

“That’s some razor,” Kate replies, taking a leisurely step forward. Everything about her screams nonchalance, the kind of slow and easy grace of a cat circling a wounded bird. Kate is so eager that it’s like there’s a magnetic field around her, pulling the room even closer and threatening to swallow Stiles up. She stops at the foot of his bed and pins him with a smile that threatens to disappear very quickly if she doesn’t get what she’s looking for. “Do you guys want to tell me what the hell is going on around here?”

Allison and Stiles exchange a look, which Kate definitely does not miss. “It’s sort of a long story,” Allison says.

“Well then I guess I’d better get comfortable.” With a smart turn of her heel, Kate strolls over to the chair across the room. In the brief seconds without Kate’s observation Allison and Stiles share a Look. It’s not like they have some sort of hunter telepathy or anything; there’s no plan or cover story beamed into Allison’s brain. She sees in his eyes that he’s scared too, but at least they’re scared together. And at least that way they might stand a chance.

Kate pushes the chair against the wall, stands on it, and reaches up to disable the smoke detector there with practiced hands. Then she sinks into the chair with one leg crossed smartly over the other, pulls out a metal tin and proceeds to roll a cigarette.

 “Since when did you start smoking?” Allison says, her surprise temporarily overriding tension. Kate had always been a firm believer in a healthy lifestyle—when you were a hunter you either stayed in peak condition or got real unhealthy real fast. Not to mention that the smell of smoke would make her easy to track.

“Picked up the habit from a friend,” Kate says. A lighter appears from her breast pocket, and she deftly flicks it open to ignite the end of her cigarette. “Well. I say friend.” She takes a drag and releases a tendril of smoke into the air. It’s not pot, and it’s definitely not tobacco. Whatever it is really reeks.

“Now that we’re all settled in. Let’s get down to business,” she says, each word a curl of grey in the air. “Tell me this story of yours.”

Trying to force her teeth to unclench, Allison marches over to Stiles bed and lowers herself as delicately as possible. Kate watches her the whole way. The weight of her partner beside her is one small comfort, but it’s not enough to chase away the nerves creeping up her spine. Time to choose her truths carefully.

“We got into town a couple days ago,” Allison begins. “The lead was animal attacks, along with some possible magic activity. We did some digging, interviewed a few possible witnesses, the usual.”

“Who did you interview?” Kate asks. Clearly this is going to be an interactive storytelling session—or as Allison would put it, an interrogation.

Allison thinks it through. “The veterinarian who consulted on the case, and a high school student who survived one of the attacks. Lydia Martin.” She pauses. The kinds of truths that won’t send Kate on a collision course with their nonhuman liaisons are quickly drying up. Kate always knows when she’s lying.

“Did you check out the old Hale estate?” She must have seen Allison’s surprise, because her smile widens. “Not my first time in town, remember? I remember that old place. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that if shit has to go down, it’ll go down at the creepiest joint in town.”

“Yeah, we checked it out,” Allison says. “Didn’t pan out, though. Just a bunch of burned up logs and bad vibes. Nothing supernatural, though.”

Kate nods and exhales a big breath of smoke. Weirdly enough, she seems relieved. “Fair enough. Then why don’t we skip to the part where Stiles ends up looking like that?” She gestures at the blood on Stiles’s chest.

Allison fights down the urge to bite her tongue. If she says it was a werewolf, Kate will be out the door in two seconds. If she gives her a name, then Derek’s hardships are at an end. And not in a way he might enjoy. Allison might be tempted to throw Derek under the bus to cut them a break, but he had saved Stiles life briefly after trying to end it himself. Maybe she owes him for that. But Kate is still waiting for an answer she can’t give.

“It was my fault,” Stiles jumps in, his voice still painfully scratchy. “We were searching the woods, thinking that some big-ass monster creature has to be hiding in there somewhere. It was getting dark, and Allison said we should get back into town. I insisted we stay out a little longer. We had flashlights, and I was stupid.” He pauses, swallows, looks away. “It came at us as soon as it was too dark to see. Pinned me down and opened me up. If Allison hadn’t been there, I’d be dead.”

“What was it?” Kate asks without a beat. Sob stories never get that much traction with her. “Wendigo? Ghoul?”

“It was too dark to see anything,” Stiles says quickly. “We’re still figuring it out.”

“Oh come on,” Kate says as her smile widens. “You’ve gotta have some idea.”

“Well,” Stiles begins reluctantly. “I’ve been doing a little poking around in some police files, and I gotta say—and bear with me—now I’m thinking this might be a Chupacabra.”

Sometimes Allison forgets how good Stiles is at lying. The beats, the breaths, the expressions on his face—they’re all completely authentic, except that they’re not. But Kate only leans back and crosses her arms. This time her smile has something sharper in it. “Bullshit,” she says with deliberate care.

Stiles’s eyes dart around the room like they’re looking for an answer or escape route there. “Now hang on—”

“Don’t even think about lying again,” Kate says. Her voice doesn’t raise even slightly, but suddenly the air is as brittle as ice on a pond. Allison can hear it cracking. Kate uncrosses her legs in a motion that could be getting comfortable, or could be preparing to pounce. “Give me a one word answer. Now.”

Allison’s eyes bore a hole into Stiles’s, but he’s not looking her way. He and Kate are locked in a eye-to-eye deathmatch, and she’s just daring him to try and lie to her face. Even Stiles isn’t that good.

Eventually he folds, a breath sagging out of his chest. “Werewolf,” he says.

Kate’s face remains unreadable, as sympathetic as a cliff wall. Her gaze shifts to Allison, and that’s the exact moment she knows they’re beat. “Good. Next question. What happened in the fire?” she asks.

The lump in Allison’s throat is getting harder and harder to swallow past. “How did you know about that?”

Kate rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid. Stiles is covered in soot, and sounds like he’s been sucking on a car exhaust all night. The fire in the warehouse section is all the local stations are talking about. Well, that and the murder last night. Some poor drifter got strung up over the road in the woods. You wouldn’t know anything about that either, would you?”

Stiles looks at her sharply. He had been decidedly unconscious while Allison surfed the morning news and discovered their latest failure. “What are you implying, Kate?” Allison asks.

Kate smiles. This time there’s nothing even slightly cheerful in it. “You’re both hunters. Shouldn’t you be aware when one of the people you’re supposed to be protecting bites the dust?”

“Stiles was unconscious all night,” Allison says, her temper rising to keep pace with her guilt. “I couldn’t just leave him.”

“Ah, right, from the fire,” Kate says with a ponderous nod. “Let’s get back to that, shall we? Why were you guys out there, and who burned it down?”

A list of all the things she can’t tell Kate flashes by Allison’s eyes: that Stiles went there with a werewolf who was now missing or worse, that they found a hex bag at the scene belonging to the local witch whose motivations can only be wildly speculated about, that the same witch left two beta werewolves comatose and their remaining pack is out for blood, and most importantly, that Kate should do her best not to kill any one of them right now. In short, they had literally nothing to say. Even Stiles has nothing up his sleeve.

In the face of their guilty silence, Kate sighs. “I hope we can help each other out here, Allison,” she says, idly picking at the hem of Stiles’s coat thrown over the back of her chair with her free hand. “We’ll do much better as a team.” In a seemingly thoughtless motion, she turns the lining of one of Stiles’s pockets out. Beside her, Allison feels Stiles go tense.

“Which really makes me wonder,” Kate continues, her fingers travelling to the other pocket and slowly tugging the lining out, “why are you lying to me?”

Held in her fingers is a small purple bag. A hex bag, Allison realizes. Stiles was carrying it in his pocket.

Kate holds it up to the light with a dispassionate eye. “This one’s dead already,” she says. “Spell’s already been cast. And seeing as the both of you aren’t currently dead as well, I’m assuming that means you’re on your witch’s trail.” She juts her chin at Stiles’s chest. “She do that to you?”

Stiles says nothing. Kate narrows her eyes. “I’m on your side here,” she says. “What the hell’s gotten into you two?”

“Kate, things here are complicated,” Allison says, a note of desperation in her voice.

“People are dying, Allison,” Kate replies coldly. “I don’t see what’s so complicated about that.”

Allison’s hands ball into fists. “Stiles and I have this covered.” She takes a breath. “I think you should leave.”

Kate’s barking laugh shatters the silence. “You have this covered? Really? Look at your partner Allison,” she says, stabbing an accusing finger in Stiles’s direction. “He got hurt, _bad_. Don’t you want to get the bastard that did that to him?”

“Of course I do!” Allison cries, suddenly finding herself on her feet. “But it’s not as simple as that!”

Kate glares up at her. “I have no idea what’s going on with you two. But if you can’t give me answers, I’ll have to go looking for some myself. Maybe I should follow up on those leads you were talking about… what was it, Lydia Martin?”

“No,” Allison says just a little too sharply. Something clicks behind Kate’s eyes, and in that moment Allison knows she’s lost.

“Alright then,” Kate says. Abruptly she stands, taking one last drag that sends the embers scurrying up to her fingers. She tosses the hex bag onto the table and, after a pointedly look at Allison, presses the smoldering end of her cigarette to it. The flame devours it in a second.

Kate dusts the ashes off the table-top. “You two are clearly exhausted, and I just got off the road. Since sleeping on the job is clearly acceptable around here, I’m going to go out to my car and have myself a nap. When I come back, I better have my answers.” With one last dangerous look over her shoulder, Kate strides out the door and leaves it wide open behind her. The air outside is chilly enough to raise goosebumps on Allison’s arms. She gets up and closes the door.

“Well, this is all just terrible.” Stiles’s voice sounds a lot weaker than it had just a minute ago. Leaning forward, Allison presses her forehead to the cool wood of the door and pulls herself together. They can’t both be falling apart at the same time. That’s not how this thing works.

“Are you okay?” she asks as soon as she’s positive her voice will stay level. She turns around to look at her partner, who’d sagged back against the pillows as soon as Kate left. His eyes are closed, his head leaning back against the headboard. She sinks down onto the bed beside him and presses a hand to his forehead. His eyelids flicker under the touch of her palm.

“I’m alive,” he says. “Although I’m guessing that doing a full cardio and smoke treatment right after getting my chest ripped open was not recommended for outpatients.”

“I’m guessing not,” Allison says with a weak laugh. In that moment all she wants to do is crawl into bed next to Stiles and sleep for about a year. Maybe when she wakes up all of this would be fixed. Or at the very least, no longer her problem. But she can’t. A surge of panic sends her heart pounding.

“Shit,” Allison says to the ceiling.

“Shit,” Stiles agrees. “Certainly the word of the day. Or the week. The town slogan, really.”

“This is bad, Stiles,” Allison says. She starts to drop her head into her hands before leaping to her feet, her heart pounding in her throat. The fear is really flowing now, tugging her veins like fishing lines and sending her muscles jittering under her skin. Right now she could run straight up a wall, or maybe straight through it. But there’s nowhere left to run to. “She knows, she knows something is up. She’s going to do something. Shit, if she finds out who we’ve been working with…”

Stiles is quiet. “Would she kill us?”

“Of course not,” Allison says, pacing a hole in the carpet. “But Scott’s pack wouldn’t stand a chance. She’d take this personal. Like they corrupted us, or something.” She whirls around. “And why the hell were you walking around with a hex bag in your pocket?!”

“I forgot I had it!” Stiles cries. “I found it on Derek when we were driving back. My working theory is that Lydia sent him to the warehouse to burn him down with me, but why she didn’t just take him out with Boyd and Isaac is beyond me.”

Allison drags her hands over her face. Nothing in this goddamn town makes any sense. When she peeks past the blinds and into the hotel parking lot, she sees Kate’s car parked right outside. Her aunt is sitting in the car, and definitely not napping. No one is coming or leaving without Kate seeing so. Swearing under her breath, Allison pulls out her phone.

“Who are you calling?” Stiles asks. Allison holds up a finger as the ringtone winds down.

“Hi, you’ve reached Scott McCall’s voicemail. Do your thing.” Allison has heard that message so many times she could parrot it back perfectly. Instead she just tightens her fists.

“Scott, I know you got all my previous messages. I’m telling you now: ignore all of them. Do _not_ come to the hotel, whatever you do. I mean it, Scott. It’s not safe for you here.” She presses the screen to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut, praying that this time he actually listens to her. “Please. Just stay away.” She snaps the phone shut and sags onto the bed. After a minute, Stiles sinks down next to her.

“What are we going to do?” Allison asks. It’s not like she expects Stiles to have the answer, but she needs to get the question out there.

“Hear me out on this, but…maybe Kate has a point,” Stiles says.

Allison slowly turns her head to look at him. Stiles sighs and rubs a hand over his hair.

“Look, I don’t trust Kate any more than you do. Well, you’ve known her for your entire life, so maybe I do. But you can’t deny that when it comes to hunters, she’s the best we know.”

“People get hurt around her, Stiles,” Allison says. “I love my aunt, Stiles, I really do. But I’m also afraid of her. If you really knew her, you would be too.”  

“But she’s right, Allison: people aren’t getting hurt, they’re getting killed. And the longer we play softball with whatever’s out there, the more that’s going to happen.” He raises his eyebrows. “Is protecting Scott’s pack really worth the lives of innocent people?”

“Scott’s pack is innocent.”

Stiles leans forward. “They’re werewolves, Allison. How can we really be sure?”

They’re interrupted by the handle being shaken from outside, followed by a pounding on the door.

“She’s back already?” Allison hisses. Stiles shakes his head in bewilderment. Allison feels like she needs to hide, to grab her gun and scramble for cover. They don’t even have a plan.

But then a voice calls out. “Allison? Stiles? Are you guys in there?” There’s a pause. “It’s me. Scott.”

“Son of a bitch,” Allison spits, lunging to her feet and wrenching the door open. Scott looks surprised to see her and then even more surprised as she grabs him and yanks him inside without a word.

 “What’s going on?” he asks urgently as Allison slams and locks the door. “Are you okay?” His nose wrinkles. “Man, it smells awful in here.”

“You complete idiot,” Allison snarls. “I told you not to show up, and what’s the first thing you do? Did you even get any of my messages?”

Scott looks embarrassed. “Yeah, I did. Sorry.”

Allison steps forward and stops herself from grabbing Scott by the front of his t-shirt. Her hands claw impressively in front of him. “Then why the _hell_ didn’t you respond? I thought you had got yourself killed!”

Scott glances at Stiles for help, who shakes his head and holds up his hands. “I’m sorry,” Scott repeats, looking down at his feet like some kind of pathetic puppy-dog.

Allison sighs through her teeth, letting the anger hiss out like steam. “Just tell me what happened last night.”

Scott nods and sits on her bed. “We took Isaac and Boyd to Deaton. He told us what we had already assumed: Lydia put them in some sort of magically-induced coma. Apparently they won’t need to eat or drink for a while because their bodies are so slowed down, but…” Scott clears his throat. “They don’t have a lot of time. Maybe a few weeks.”

“What did you do next?” Allison prompts him after a moment. There’s no time to stew in the misery of their situation.

“I was going to go after Lydia,” Scott says. “But, ah. I did a little thinking. About what you said. And I realized I wouldn’t be helping them by rushing in without a plan. So I had Derek stay with Deaton to guard Isaac and Boyd, and I headed over here to make sure you and Stiles made it back.”

Allison stares at him. “You were at the motel? Why didn’t you say anything?”

If anything Scott manages to look even more chagrined. “Well I was listening to your voicemail messages,” he says. “You sounded really mad.”

She lets her head sink into her hands. Working with amateurs is the worst. “And you showed up as soon as I told you not to because… why?”

“It sounded like you were in trouble,” Scott says.

“Well, you weren’t wrong,” Stiles says weakly. Scott looks at him suddenly, a realization dawning.

“There’s something else,” he says, stepping forward and reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket. “I wasn’t gone all night for nothing. I helped Deaton make something, while I was there. He said it would help get you back on your feet.” He produces a little bottle, hardly two inches tall. For a second he nearly tosses it to Stiles before realizing that testing the hand-eye coordination of someone currently incapable of raising their arms above their head is probably not a good idea. Instead he walks over and hands it to him, an apologetic look on his face.

“I know I haven’t been much of a help to you guys,” Scott says. “But maybe this is something.”

“What is it?” Stiles squints at the vial, holding it up to the light as best he can. Allison can’t help but drift closer, her suspicions rising.

Scott shrugs. “Not sure, to be honest. I’m not big on magic stuff. But if Deaton says it’ll help, you should probably take it.”

“Oh sure, we should just trust this guy,” Allison says. Because trusting random strangers with mysterious potions is just something that happens now.

“Well it’s not like it could make me any worse,” Stiles retorts. “It can’t, right?”

“It’s really unlikely,” Scott says after a minute.

Stiles bobs his head. “Well, there you have it. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

Allison shakes her head. “Stiles, I don’t like this. Messing with this stuff never turns out well.”

“With all that’s happening around here, do I really have a choice?” Stiles smiles, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. Allison swallows her protests. Stiles is the one in pain here, and in the end it’s his decision. It’s not like they haven’t used magic to their benefit before—mountain ash was just one example.

He turns to Scott. “So what, do I drink it or something?”

“You put it right on the skin,” Scott replies. “Can you get your shirt off?”

“Buy me a drink first,” Stiles mutters. He starts trying to lift up the bottom hem, getting it about as far as his navel before grimacing in pain. “On second thought: anyone got a pair of scissors?”

Without fanfare, Scott steps up and slices Stiles’s shirt open with one claw, revealing the red gashes below. The skin around them is pink and puffy, and it looks like there’s some pus action going on as well. Allison’s no doctor, but she’s willing to bet that the outlook is not good. Stiles stares down at it, his expression tight.

“I liked that shirt,” he says at last.

“Let’s get this over with,” Allison says, gently taking the bottle from Stiles and uncorking it with a pop. There’s a light, fruity smell to it, with something like nail-polish remover underneath it. Definitely not the kind of stuff she’d want to have rubbed onto her chest, but then again she wouldn’t want to have her skin ripped open either. “I just put it right on?”

“That’s what he said,” Scott replies.

She pauses one last time. “Ready?”

Stiles gives a curt nod. No use waiting any longer. Allison carefully pours out the liquid out over Stiles’s wounds. It’s green, and viscous like syrup, and Stiles’s breath hisses through his teeth as soon as it hits. Allison pauses, looking up to him in case his face is melting off, but he waves her on roughly. The rest of the bottle goes onto his skin until the area is completely covered. Stiles’s eyes are screwed tightly shut. She reaches forward and takes his hand, which he immediately grips like his life depends on it.

“Do we have to say some magic words or something?” Allison asks. Seeing Stiles in this much pain is not exactly a pleasant experience.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Scott replies. “Just watch.”

Allison focuses on Stiles’s chest, which is easier than watching his face. Little bubbles have started forming like the ones when you put hydrogen peroxide on a cut—in only a minute there’s a thin layer of foam covering each of the gashes. The smell of nail polish in the room intensifies, and Stiles makes a short sound in the back of his throat. His grip relaxes.

“Stiles?” Allison prompts. “You still with us?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says. “Actually, that feels a lot better.” He releases Allison’s hand and reaches up to his chest.

“Maybe you shouldn’t—” Allison starts to say.

“No, look, it’s fine.” Stiles prods at the place where his wounds were, gently brushing away the remains of whatever potion Deaton whipped up. Underneath, the inflamed skin has gone back to normal, and the gashes—Allison leans forward, her eyebrows raising. They’re not gone, not by a long shot, but it looks like the mixture moved their healing up a good few weeks. 

“Still a bit tender,” Stiles says. “But it doesn’t hurt to breathe anymore, so that’s a plus.” After a minute he pushes himself off the pillows, carefully at first and then all at once. He looks up, and his face is clear. He grins, and Allison can’t help but grin back. With Stiles back in commission, everything seems a little bit brighter.

“My compliments to the chef.” Stiles says with a nod in Scott’s direction. “At least that’s one less thing in this town to worry about.”

Scott’s smile fades. “Speaking of which. What’s this big problem you were warning me away from on the phone?”

All at once the good feeling seems to drain out of the room. This is only a break, Allison has to remind herself. The real danger is still out there, and it’s bigger and badder than ever. “My aunt is in town,” Allison explains, massaging her temples with her fingertips. “She’s a hunter like us, except much worse. She draws the line between human and not, instead of good or bad.”

“Think the Joker meets season three Faith,” Stiles says, leaning over to dig through his duffle bag for a  new shirt.

Scott looks at him in surprise. “You watch Buffy?”

Stiles straightens up. “Uh, yeah man. That show is awesome.”

Scott breaks out into a broad grin. “Hell yes it is. I can’t get any of the betas to watch it. Who’s your favorite character?”

 “Are you two going to start planning the wedding, or can we please try to focus here?” Allison snaps. “Scott, if Kate finds out about your less than human condition, that’s it. Game over. She’ll kill you without blinking.”

Scott raises his eyebrows dramatically. He’s not taking this as seriously as he should be, but Allison can’t blame him. It’s hard to understand Kate until you really get a look at her darkness. Allison doubts she fully understands the woman herself.

“So what are we going to do?” Scott asks, jostling her back into the present moment. “You have to get Kate out of town, right?”

Allison drags her hands over her face. Scott and Stiles aren’t the only ones who need to focus. They’re all exhausted, beaten down, their concentration about as sharp as the wrong end of a shovel. Yet the universe continues making more demands than they’re capable of meeting.

“We can’t,” Allison sighs eventually. “She’s got the scent of blood in her nose. She knows there’s a hunt here, and she’ll burn this town to the ground before she leaves without a kill.” She looks Scott in the eyes. This had better sink in. “What you need to do is get yourself as far away from here as possible. Hell, take Derek too for all I care. Just stay away from her.”

“What, and just leave you to spend some quality time with a psychopath?” Scott protests indignantly. “I don’t think so. I’ve been keeping the bite a secret for three years, Allison. I think I can handle it for long enough to watch your back.”

Allison glares at him. “You are unbelievable,” she says.

“At any rate, we should come up with a cover story for you,” Stiles says to Scott. “She’s staking out our hotel room. Since you decided to be an arbitrary dumbass, there’s no way she didn’t see you go in.”

Scott blinks. “Uh, guys. There was no one out there when I came in.”

Allison stands up and eases the blinds open a crack. They look out on a terribly empty parking lot.

“Ah,” Allison announces. “ _Shit_.”

 

 

 

When her father and aunt would return from a hunt and a much younger Allison would run out to greet them, Kate would always scoop her up and spin her around and tell that the monsters were all good and dead. As she got older, and closer to going hunting as well, she started noticing the looks her father would give Kate when he thought no one was looking. There’d been accusation in his eyes. Wariness. But Allison never thought much about it. She’d been a kid, after all. And Kate had been her very own action hero.

And then they started hunting together. Things changed pretty quickly after that. The memory was still fresh in Allison’s mind: the shivering weight of a gun in her hand, the smell of blood like someone had smashed her nose with a roll of pennies. The bodies hadn’t looked like bodies at all, just strange shapeless lumps sprawled on the concrete floor. Kate had stood over them, unscrewing the silencer off her gun while Chris’s shouts washed over her.

“This is out of line, Kate.” Her father’s eyes were rarely warm, and in that moment they could have been chipped off a glacier. “You had no right to kill them too. Not until we were sure.”

“The gene runs in families, Chris,” she had said. “You don’t want to fact check, you want to waste time hang-wringing instead of doing what needs to be done. I just saved time and lives by acting on what we already know.”

“The sister could have been human,” Chris said tersely. “We aren’t executioners, Kate. Allison needs to understand that.”

“You’re right,” Kate replies indolently. “We’re not executioners—we’re exterminators. It’s about time that you understood that yourself.” She turned to Allison and tossed her the silencer. Her shaking hands nearly fumbled it to the ground. “Present from me, baby girl. Don’t ever be afraid to use it.” She’d left the room whistling with a swing in her step.

The silencer is at the bottom of the ammo compartment in the Jeep. Maybe she should have gotten rid of it, as a symbolic gesture or something. She hasn’t. It’s come in handy.

“Where are we going?” Scott asks from the back seat as they tear down the roads from the hotel room. His voice jostles Allison out of the memory, though reality isn’t much more pleasant. “Isn’t the fact that your aunt is gone a good thing?”

“The only thing worse than Kate breathing down our necks is her running loose,” Allison replies. “She’s going to follow the only lead she wormed out of us: Lydia.”

“I still think that going _towards_ the big showdown between a powerful witch and psychotic hunter is a bad idea,” Stiles grumbles, checking the chamber of his gun. Allison’s hands are tight around the wheel. She’s one more crisis away from snapping the plastic in half.

“We either have to hold Kate back, or help her finish the job,” Allison says tersely. “We’ll figure out which when we get there.”

Through the whole drive Scott’s hands stays clenched on the back of Allison’s chair, and though she keeps her eyes on the road she knows exactly which muscle will be twitching in Stiles’s cheek. A confrontation with Lydia was inevitable. She’d known that. But these circumstances were a few notches below ideal.

When they pull up to the curb across from her house Allison sees Kate’s SUV parked across the street, as menacing to her as it was innocuous to the average eye. The car is hardly in park before they’re piling out, various weaponry whisked under coats or waistbands. Wearing layers all the time got pretty hot, but there was no shortage of places to hide a weapon. And if Allison’s gut was right, they’d be needing all of it.

They hurry across the street, all pretenses of subtlety dropped in favor of speed. The surrounding houses are dark and motionless, their blinds closed to the trio passing in front of them.

“Ugh,” Scott groans from just behind her. “Something really reeks.”

“Not the time, Scott,” Allison snaps. They’re just about to run through the white-picket gate in front of Lydia’s house when a loud and obtrusive cough comes from behind them.

“Took you long enough,” Kate says, stepping out from her place leaning (or more accurately, skulking) against the side of her car. Another of her cigarettes hangs from between her fingers. Her face is unreadable except for a hint of a smirk. Allison doubts she would like the joke.

At the first sound of her voice Scott had whirled around, practically ready to lunge out with his fists. His claws are mercifully retracted, but Allison can’t see his eyes. Judging by the way Kate isn’t trying to kill him, she had to assume he had things under control.

Kate ambles forward, her thumbs jammed into her belt loops and her eyebrows raised coolly. The smoldering cigarette lands in the grass behind her. “I figured you guys would come running as soon as you saw I was gone. I just had to get things moving, you know? I’d hate to face down a powerful witch on my lonesome.” Her eyes turn to Scott. She frowns. “Speaking of which. Who’s the new guy? You guys a threesome now?”

“You must be Kate,” Scott says before Allison can speak on his behalf. She clenches her jaw against her protestations. If Scott says the wrong thing, if their cover is blown—she can’t preoccupy herself with possibilities with no immediate answers.

Kate’s face breaks into a smile. Allison calls it a smile. Her teeth are certainly bared. “I see my reputation precedes me. Can’t say the same for you.”

“I’m Scott,” he says, holding out his hand stiffly. After a moment Kate steps up to grasp it, way farther into his personal space than Allison is comfortable with. Scott flinches, ever so slightly. With a thrill of horror Allison sees his nostrils dilate in a very inhuman way—but Kate isn’t looking at his face anymore. Her eyes slide over him, leaving no square inch unexamined. Allison’s fists clench at her sides.

“Well, well, Scott,” she says, looking back up into his face again. “What pretty brown eyes you have.”

“Kate,” Allison says before she can help herself.

Her aunt glances over at her, her lips curling. After a moment she drops Scott’s hand.  

“And what exactly is it you’re doing here with my darling niece?” Kate asks.

Allison sees a flash of panic in Scott’s eyes. The memory of how they never actually came up with a cover story flashes with painful clarity behind Allison’s’ eyes. “Uh,” he says. Kate’s eyebrows raise. _Say anything_ , Allison pleads internally. _Literally anything._ “Read. I…read things.” Well. Maybe don’t say that.

“Local lore expert,” Stiles chimes in front behind them. “Scott here knows the town like the back of his hand.”

“Is that so,” Kate murmurs. “Guess we’re sharing the family secret with every Fred, Bob, and Sam we run into these days. You any good in a fight, Scotty boy? Because trust me,” she says, jerking her head towards the house looming behind them. “You’re gonna have to be.”

“We should talk about this,” Allison says quickly. “I know you know how dangerous this could be. We need a plan—”

“We have a plan,” Kate replies as her hands flit over the arsenal hidden under her clothes. “Kill the bitch. Simple.”

“We need more information,” Allison says. “From what we know so far, Lydia isn’t solely responsible for what’s happening her. Without her, we have nothing.”

“Trust me, I am dying to know what you guys know so far,” Kate says. “Here’s an idea: we go in, and we make her talk. Then we do things my way. Win-win.”

Something twists in Allison’s stomach like a fishhook down her throat. “Kate, she’s just a kid.” When Kate looks like she’s about to brush the issue off, Allison raises her hands. “We don’t know a whole lot of what’s going on in Lydia’s head. As soon as we start drawing guns she’s going to take thing south real fast. If I can talk the intel out of her we’ll all be better off.” She tilts her head down to level her gaze. “Let me try things my way first. If that doesn’t work, the ball’s in your court. Just give me a shot.”

Kate stares her down for a minute, her smile all but disappeared. She shakes her head. “Damn,” she muses. “You’re a lot bossier than I remember, baby girl. All that time ordering Stiles around. Alright, alright,” she says as Allison opens her mouth to argue. “We’ll play nice, for now. But I’m warning you.” She holds up a finger. “One wrong move on Sabrina’s part.” The finger drags across her neck. Allison doesn’t ask for elaboration.

She takes the lead up to Lydia’s front door. It’s amazing that their little pow-wow in broad daylight hasn’t brought down the fury of the neighborhood watch, but Allison hasn’t seen a single person on this street the whole time they’ve been standing there. It’s almost as if the whole street is under some sort of spell. The forest of thorns from Sleeping Beauty comes to mind.

They pause in front of the front door, exchanging a look. The hunters’ faces are emotionless masks, every hint of fear or doubt locked away. Scott isn’t doing quite as well, but his jaw is set. They’re all as ready as they’re likely to be for whatever is waiting for them behind this door. She gives a short nod. Stiles goes to knock, but the door swings open under his knuckles with a sigh, releasing the thick fragrance of wolfsbane into the open air like a carpet rolled out at their feet. Stiles trades a meaningful look with Allison.

“That’s not creepy at all,” he mutters, pushing it open the rest of the way and stepping inside. Allison has to fight down the urge to draw her weapon; once Kate sees that violence is on the table there’ll be no stopping her. As Scott passes the threshold she sees him shudder, but luckily Kate’s attention is focused on looking for something to kill. He takes a short breath and gives Allison a curt nod: he has it under control. She trusts him to get out if he needed to this time.

Stiles pads down the hallway, followed by Allison and Kate and finally Scott. As they near the living room Allison notices that the fragments of the vase are still buried in the carpet. They crunch quietly under their feet as they pass. Stiles takes one step into the living room before drawing up short, his hand flying up to gesture for them to stop. Allison peers around the corner carefully.

Lydia’s parents sit in overstuffed armchairs, sprawled they have no bones in their bodies. For a split second Allison thinks that they’re too late, that Kate was right and Lydia is a murderer. But then their heads turn to stare at the newcomers, their gazes unfocused and distant.

“Oh, hello there,” Mrs. Martin says. “You must be Lydia’s friends.” The group trades an unsettled glance.

“That’s right, Mrs. Martin,” Stiles says smoothly, stepping forward into the room. “We’re looking for her now. Can you tell us where she is?” The woman’s eyes slide out of focus for a second, and a tiny frown pinches the skin between her brows.

“She’s… out back,” she says. “Playing.” A chill runs down Allison’s spine. It’s like they’ve been cracked open and hollowed out, leaving nothing but their voices behind.

Stiles looks shaken, but he manages a nod and a tight smile. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Martin,” he says. For a minute it looks like he’s about to leave before he turns back to them suddenly. “Do you need me to call someone?” he asks. “Do you need help?” Lydia’s parents look at him uncomprehendingly, empty smiles dawning on their faces.

“There’s some juice in the fridge, if you want it,” Mr. Martin suggests. Stiles lips form a thin line, but he turns and heads to the back door without saying another word. Allison follows him, trying not to look too closely at the hollow shells behind them.

“What’s wrong with them?” Scott asks as they leave the room behind. He’s walking closer to Allison than he probably needs to, and she doesn’t miss the shakiness in his voice. She can’t blame him. She’s freaked-out too.

“Welcome to the world of magic, kid,” Kate says darkly. “If you ask me, they’re worse than any other monster with teeth and claws. They’re one step away from human, and they do what they do anyways.”

Stiles's face is hard and bitter, but he doesn’t say a word. Allison knows that family touches him in a way that Allison doubts she could ever be even capable of feeling. They come from such different backgrounds. She’d been raised with death; Stiles had been thrust into it.

The door to the back porch lies open in front of them, swinging gently in the breeze. The Saturday morning sunlight isn’t enough to make the image any less haunting. There’s something that hangs around this house like fog. Fear has been rooted here for so long that it’s released spores into the air. Allison has felt something similar before, while descending into the basement of an old lodge where, decades ago, an old serial killer had kept his victims alive: a deep sense of dread. But it hadn’t been his ghost waiting for her in the darkness; the spirits of his victims had nearly torn her apart.

They step out onto the porch, the edge of the woods just a short strip of lawn away. Glancing down at the ground, Allison notices a string of pale purple flowers lying on the grass, a line leading into the woods like a trail of breadcrumbs. Or an invitation.

Scott bends down to pick one up, handling it carefully by the stem. “Wolfsbane,” he says gravely.

“Oh, I do _not_ like this,” Stiles says. The rest of the group silently agrees, huddled there against a wind that suddenly feels a bit too portentous for Allison’s liking. If this isn’t some kind of trap then Allison is the Pope. But with Kate at her back and the bodies piling up she doesn’t have too much of a choice, so she squares her shoulders and makes for the forest.

The trail of flowers loops and curls into the trees, quickly leaving the house behind until they’re surrounded by woods. There’s nothing to show where they’re going other than that little purple line, and although they’ve only been walking for a few minutes it already feels like they’re in the heart of the forest. Fallen leaves swish and crackle around their feet as they go. Allison finds herself whirling around at every crack of a twig or chattering of a squirrel, constantly glancing behind to make sure the flowers aren’t disappearing behind them. This whole situation is conjuring up far too many lamb-to-slaughter metaphors than she’s entirely comfortable with.

The trail ends in the middle of a clearing, where a thicket of wolfsbane has sprung up out of the leaves. The air here seems stiller somehow, the sunlight a little colder. Allison is just about done with all the ominous bullshit at this point.

“Well,” she shouts, holding her arms up and turning to face the trees. “We’re here. Come out, come out, wherever you are!” She’s yelling at the top of her lungs, but her voice sounds small and weak.

“So glad you found me,” a voice says. Allison whirls around, her hand going automatically to the handle of her gun. There’s no one to be seen. Not like that means anything. Taking a breath, she forces herself to take her hands off her weapon and put them in the air.

“We’re just here to talk,” she says firmly, scanning for any signs of motion. There’s a sarcastic laugh.

“I’m not used to my conversations involving so much weaponry,” the voice says.

“And I’m not used to my conversations involving disembodied voices,” Allison calls back, hoping snark will draw the witch out of hiding. If there’s one thing hunting’s taught her, it’s that supernatural creatures are almost always prideful overconfident assholes. Sure enough, a ripple slides through the air just beside a sapling, and a girl steps out of the shimmering mirage. She’s about the same age as Allison, fair skin, coppery hair, carefully applied makeup. There’s nothing overtly magical or dangerous about her, dramatic entrance aside. The biggest impression Allison gets is that she’s really very beautiful. No, not beautiful, exactly--alluring. Like she's got hold of something in Allison and is slowly reeling her in.

The girl, Lydia, cocks her head to the side and flicks her eyes over the group in front of her. “Judgmental” doesn’t really do her expression justice. Allison feels like the new kid on her first day of school, weighed and measured and portioned out into little categories without having any say in it. She resists the urge to cross her arms and set her jaw. She’s a hunter, not a schoolgirl. She can handle a little cattiness. Even if it does come from someone who could probably snap her neck as easy as blinking.

“So,” Lydia purrs. “This is the ragtag bunch of adventurers come to slay the wicked witch. I’m underwhelmed.”

“We were serious about the 'no-slaying” part,' Stiles interjects.

Lydia’s gaze travels to him. A smile uncurls on her lips like a cat stretching in the sun. “Nice spellwork on that chest of yours. Enjoy breathing easy while you can.”

“How about we lay off the threats for a minute?” Stiles says. As a show of good faith that surprises even Allison, he pulls the gun and knife from his belt and tosses them to the ground. “See? No stabbies or shooties.” He gives Allison a meaningful look. She’s loath to part with her weaponry, but she can’t back out now without ruining the gesture. So she grits her teeth and tosses her gun to the ground, pulling a knife out of her boot to go with it. She’s still got plenty more weapons concealed around her person to work with if needed.

Kate doesn’t move, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin jutted out aggressively.

“Kate,” Allison presses urgently. “You said we’d do this my way.” 

Kate snorts. “Mmm, no can do, baby girl. Time’s up.” She levels her gaze at Lydia, who returns it in kind. “If it were up to me, you’d have a bullet in your brain two minutes ago, witch,” Kate says smoothly. She doesn’t even force a threat into it; it’s a statement of fact. “But as it happens, my partners have other ideas. So first you’re going to answer some questions, and then…” Her grin widens. “We’ll see.”

“Ooo.” Lydia’s eyes narrow contemptuously. “Are you the _bad cop_?”

“That’s enough, Kate,” Allison says quickly, stepping between them before they start firing something other than insults. She turns to the witch, her expression carefully neutral.

“Lydia,” Scott says, stepping forward. “I’ve known you for a long time—not very well, maybe, but well enough to know that when there’s something seriously wrong. If you won’t help us, at least let us help you.” Allison’s not sure how she feels about that. She may not be lining up to kill the girl, but she can’t say she’s all that eager to play therapist either.

“What makes you think I need your help?” Lydia asks primly. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got some pretty serious firepower at my disposal. Pun definitely intended.”

“Yeah?” Stiles shoots back. “And how’s that working out for you? We’ve seen your house, Lydia. For someone who supposedly has all that power, you sure seem pretty scared.”

Something twists just behind Lydia’s eyes, and her cold mask falters. Stiles raises his hands defensively, like he’s calming a wild animal.

“Just tell us what it is you’re so afraid of,” he says, taking a step forward.  Lydia shakes her head stubbornly, her eyes roving around the edge of the trees like she’s looking for something. Allison holds her breath, waiting for Lydia’s answer

“I can’t do that,” Lydia says eventually, the cold edge returning. “But I can tell you that you’re wasting your time. What’s happening here is bigger than you know. The pieces are all in motion; you're too late to stop them.”

“Try us,” Allison says. Lydia sizes her up. 

“I don’t need to tell you anything, Allison,” she says sweetly. “All the pieces are in your hand. You just need to use that cute little brain of yours to put them all together.”

“What’s stopping you?” Allison gestures around at the empty forest around them. “We’re totally alone here. You can talk.”

A strange smile touches Lydia’s lips. “At the risk of sounding completely crazy,” she says quietly, “I’m never really alone.” Her eyes seem to follow something that isn’t there.

“Okay, Professor Quirrell,” she hears Stiles mutter.

“Lydia,” Allison begins cautiously, “is there something here with you now?” Before she can answer Lydia cries out, her fingers flying to the sides of her head as her face screws up in pain. Allison’s hand darts to her gun on reflex, though she has no idea who she plans on shooting at. The agony and fear on Lydia’s face strikes a nerve—in that moment, Allison couldn’t be less sure whether to help her or put her down.

Kate has no such doubts. “Alright, that’s enough.” She pushes Allison aside, directing a predatory stare at Lydia. “Straight answers, bitch.” The click of metal as she raises her gun and flips the safety off makes Allison’s skin go cold. “ _Now_.”

Lydia forces herself up, the pain in her eyes retracting behind a haughty mask. In just a second it’s like nothing had happened at all. She bites her lip pensively, pretending to think it through. “No,” she decides, and before Kate can make a move she snaps her fingers. Suddenly the world wrenches around her and Allison is flying backwards, her back hitting the dirt hard enough to drive the air out of her lungs. She lies there gasping, struggling to get up before she realizes that her arms and legs are pinned to the ground by something she can neither see nor feel. To her right and left she can hear the rest of their party in similar states of groaning.

A shape looms into her vision above her; Lydia’s face, a smirk on her face. Allison yanks at her limbs to no avail, her heart pounding in her ears. Throwing away her gun was a much worse idea in retrospect. She's wide open, her chest and throat bared like she's just begging for Lydia to tear something out.

She kneels by Allison’s side and flips open her jacket, dipping into the inside pocket where she keeps her lighter. Allison's fists are clenched as tightly as her teeth, staring straight up into the grey branches prodding at the sky. Lydia's presence sends her vibrating with tension, like she's a piano wire and Lydia is playing Beethoven.

“I left you a little present,” Lydia says, her voice so quiet Allison can hardly hear it. “Call it a piece of town history. It's somewhere you're sure to find it—you just have to look.” She flicks the lighter open to stare into the flames. For a second it’s like she’s lost in the tiny little light. A shiver goes through her, and she snaps it closed. Drawing a hex bag out of her own pocket, Lydia presses the lighter into Allison’s palm and lays the bag right beside it. Before straightening up, she leans over to bend her head beside Allison’s. The strawberry fringe of her hair brushes against Allison’s cheek as she leans down close to Allison’s ear. Her lips are soft and chapped, and Allison could swear she feels them trembling.

“You’re running out of time,” she whispers. “There’s nothing more I can do. It’s up to you now. Please hurry.” When Lydia pulls back her eyes are wild with a sudden flash of fear. She squeezes them shut. A second later she’s gone.

Allison lies there for a minute, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. That proves to be a thankless task, so she sets to working her stiff fingers to fumbling the lighter open. She can scarcely move, but after nearly dropping it three times she manages to click a small flame to life, and an instant later there’s a _whoosh_ of ignition to the right of her head and suddenly she can move.

Stiles springs to his feet immediately and starts stamping out the hex bag before they become responsible for burning the forest down. With a wince Allison hoists herself up after him, her muscles feeling like they've been put through a taffy puller. Kate is already prowling the edge of the forest, her gun back in her hand and a sour expression on her face. Allison mirrors it.

“Well, you screwed that one up pretty nicely Kate,” she snaps. The older woman glares at her as she stomps into her personal space.

“At least I wasn’t coddling the enemy,” she spits, shooting a withering glance at Stiles. “’Let us help you?’ Are you _serious_? What have you two been doing these past years since you left, Allison? Running some kind of monster rehabilitation clinic?” Her eyes flash dangerously. “ _We kill things_. That’s it, end of discussion. If we can use them first, even better, but I don’t want to ever see you pull some shit like that again.” She gestures with her gun for emphasis, and Allison wonders if she even bothered to put the safety back on. All Allison can do is clench her teeth and fight back the swarm of angry replies fizzling on her tongue. Kate stares at her a minute longer before taking Allison’s silence as agreement.

“That’s my girl,” she says, patting Allison’s cheek like she’s ten years old again, and just like that the illusion of calm is back in place. “I’ll be waiting in my car. Hope you learned a lesson from all this, newbie,” Kate comments to Scott as she walks by.

“Oh, I definitely did,” he replies too quietly for Kate to hear, sidling up beside Allison. He looks at her, and Allison can see he’s as angry as she is. “Are you okay?” he asks, touching her shoulder gently. She can’t bring herself to push his hand away.

“I’m fine,” she says forcefully, brushing the leaves off her jeans to give her hands something to do. “Just asking myself some serious questions about my heritage right now.”

“At least this ordeal wasn’t completely useless,” Stiles mutters. Scott and Allison look at him expectantly. His smile is halting and weak, but it's a smile all the same. “Being thrown backwards into the ground finally cracked my back. It’s been really sore all day.” 

Allison rolls her eyes because this is what they do.“You’re an idiot, Stiles.”

“You love it.”

“Hang on,” Scott says suddenly. “What did Lydia say to you when we were all pinned down?”

Allison frowns. “She said she left me something, where I’d know where to find it. And that there wasn’t much more she could do, and that I needed to hurry.” She glances down at the lighter, still clenched in her right fist. As if she needed any more pressure right now.

There's a quiet buzzing noise and Scott gives a jolt, his hands reaching into his back pocket to pull out a cellphone. A frown creases his face. “Derek’s been calling,” he murmurs, raising the phone to his ear and walking away. 

Stiles takes a step closer to Allison and raises his hands. “Well, at least no one died,” he says.

“We should make that our team motto,” Allison says ruefully. “Except most of the time it’s not even true.”

“Let’s count our victories, not our losses,” Stiles says. It’s sort of a joke, but neither of them laugh. It rings a little too true.

Scott steps back from his phone call, a strange expression on his face. Dread lurches in Allison’s chest. Strange expressions never bode well.

“Scott?” she prompts him. “What happened?”

He looks up, like he'd forgotten they were here. “It’s Erica,” he says eventually.

“They found her?” Allison says, hope flaring up in her chest. Just as quickly the other potential ending to this scenario occurs to her. “Is she—”

“She’s alive,” Scott says quickly. “She’s out near the edge of town. If we leave now, we can catch up with her.”

“Hang on,” Stiles says, grabbing Scott’s arm before he can run back to the Jeep. “May I remind you of the giant red-eyed shape that took her from the fire? Isn’t there a good chance that if Erica is running free that thing isn’t far behind?”

Red glints around the edge of Scott’s irises like the sun bleeding out from behind an eclipse. “I’m counting on it.”

 


	5. i'm not the way that you found me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets and dead people are quickly becoming Beacon Hills' specialty, and every lie that the hunters unravel only drives them further away from each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, the thanks which I now express to my beta [Margotkim](margotkim.tumblr.com) are equivalent to exactly one gallon of tears. My tears. Thanks for the help, man. 
> 
> And thank you to all of my wonderful readers sticking with me through the ups and downs of this story. You guys keep me going!

It’s funny. A month ago, Stiles would hardly have considered laying down his weapons with a dangerous witch just twenty feet away. Six months before that, he would have shot her without question. His dad didn’t really believe in the whole grey area thing. Evil was evil. You didn’t coddle it.

Not like Allison was in the business of coddling monsters. In their time together Stiles had seen her do things that could make even his thick skin crawl. She’s related to Kate, after all. But there’s always been something in her that was ready to hold back, to inch off the trigger, to listen. Her family’s code was evidence enough of that—they had their shades of grey as carefully labeled as a paint shop. But there was no room for morality where Stiles came from.

So here they are, standing around chatting like five minutes ago they weren’t all pinned down like butterflies on a board. Well, more accurately he’s standing around, and Scott and Allison are chatting with the weird intense eye-stuff they’ve been getting on recently. Which, hey, fine. Making friends. Yay for that.

“We don’t have time to make preparations,” Allison is saying. “This is the best lead we’re likely to get. We can’t afford to lose it.”

“Whatever happened to not running in recklessly?” Scott shoots back.

“Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do—”

“Oh, I’m fine with it,” Scott says with a grim smile. “A chance to find whatever it is that did this to my pack and kick its ass? Count me in.”

 “Hang on, hang on.” Stiles interjects. He glances at the trees behind them, where Kate had supposedly disappeared en route back to her car. ‘Supposedly’ didn’t quite cut it. He lowers his voice. “Are we forgetting that Terminator T-900 over there is still breathing smoke down the back of our necks? How are we supposed to catch up with Erica without explaining the situation to her?”

“She can’t come along,” Scott says firmly. “We have no idea what’s happening with Erica, whether she’s hurt or even able to maintain human form. I won’t risk Kate hurting her, especially after this.” He gestures at the broken branches and scorching hex bag on the ground, as if any of them are likely to have forgotten Kate going off script.

“Okay, so we eliminate Kate,” Stiles says. “I’m sorry, if we had some way of doing that how come we didn’t earlier? Like five minutes after she got here, for example?”

The silence that follows isn’t so much thoughtful as it is defeated. Allison raises her eyes.

“We split up. Me and Scott go after Erica. You distract Kate.”

Stiles stares at her in disbelief. “Wait, are you serious? Why am I stuck babysitting the Antichrist? She’s your aunt.”

“Exactly. I spent a good part of my childhood growing up around her, and she knows every trick I could possibility have up my sleeve. If I’m lying, she’ll see right through me. At least you bring something new to the table.”

“Right, because that worked out so well in the motel room,” Stiles retorts. “But seriously Allison, you want us to split up now? What happened to sticking together?”

“That was before Kate got here,” Allison says. Her eyes are suddenly hard. Her jawline is also hard. There’s a general vibe of hardness around her that puts Stiles on edge. Kate has really done a number on her. “We’ll do everything we can to stop the killings before anyone else gets hurt. But if Kate hurts just one innocent person, their blood is on our hands. She’s our responsibility now.”

Stiles doesn’t say how fucked up it is that someone not even old enough to order a drink at a bar has to be put in charge of a fully functional and more than fully-armed adult. “Counterpoint: if you die because I’m not there to watch your back, then your blood is on _my_ hands. You think I’m cool with that?”

“We’re coming up on the final quarter here,” Allison says. “There’s no room to play it safe. We’re facing down the biggest bad here, and my money is on whatever you saw in the fire.”

“You don’t need to remind me,” Stiles snaps. Allison clamps her teeth on whatever she was about to spit out and looks away. He resists the urge to swallow, acutely aware of the soreness in his throat, the taste of the smoke. Just twenty-four hours ago, maybe less, he’d had his lungs pan-seared and had walked away with a few less eyebrow hairs than he would have liked. Not exactly his shining moment, but he’d had worse. But that shape in the fire, something strong enough to send a fully-fledged werewolf flying across the room, powerful enough to keep a witch in tow—that was something Stiles would not want to meet in a dark alley. Or in any well-lighted locale, actually. But let’s be honest, it’s going to be a dark alley. God, he's sick of this town.

Stiles shakes his head, like he can dislodge the exhaustion squatting in his brain. “Whatever I saw in the fire was no joke. We could hardly face down one of its lackeys with both of us together, and you want to go after it separate?” He snorts derisively. “Give me a break. We don't even know what this thing is, let alone how to fight it. Think twice about this, if you don't want to get us all killed.”

Allison’s eyes flash dangerously. He’s dancing over a line here. What he did best. He offers up a smile—Allison starts to step forward with motives unknown yet undoubtedly unfriendly, but Scott’s hand on her shoulder pulls her up short. She glances back at him; they have their own little moment. Stiles could grind his teeth down to nubs in the time it took them to pry their eyes off each other, but finally she manages it. When she does, her eyes are softer.“I need you on my side for this, Stiles.”

That’s it. That’s the final straw gently settling down on his back. “ _On your side?_ You can’t be serious! I put my gun down, Allison. Do you know how hard that was? You think I would have done that if I didn’t trust you completely? If I wasn’t with you, 100%?”

Allison raises her hands. “Stiles—”

“No, you know what? This situation is fucked. When did you start trusting me less than a goddamn werewolf?” Wolf-boy is looking more than a little uncomfortable, with good reason. “Can you give us a minute here?” Stiles jerks his thumb towards the woods violently. “Go chase your tail or something.”

“You do remember about the whole super-hearing thing, right?” Allison says.

Stiles throws his hands up in the air. If a table was to appear in the middle of the woods here, he would flip it. “ _Whatever_. Allison, I am becoming supremely uncomfortable with how cozy you are with our canine friends.”

He sees Scott edging backwards, seemingly fascinated by the sky and his own fingernails alternately. Allison’s nostrils flare. “What do they have to do to prove to you that they’re here to help? If they were another group of hunters you wouldn’t think twice.”

“Firstly, that is untrue. I’m not a trusting guy no matter what your genetic code looks like. Secondly, I think you’re forgetting that, good-intentions or no, on at least some level Scott and company are dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad of that: they wouldn’t be much use if they weren’t. But you’re eager to be right in the thick of them, with no backup. How is that smart?”

“It’s smart, Stiles,” Allison says, taking a step closer, “because we have no other choice. Someone needs to pull Kate out of the game. Someone _human_. We’re not exactly flush with options on that front.” She leans forward. “You know we can handle this, Stiles.”

“I know _we_ can handle this,” Stiles says. “The past few times we parted ways in this town didn’t exactly go all that well. We’re better when we’re together.”

“I’m not denying that. But it’s not an option right now.”

He circles around in his own head, looking for a lever or foothold to shake her out of this. There's nothing but smooth resolve. Shaking his head, he raises his hands in defeat. "Alright. Alright, fine. We'll go with your stupid plan. But promise me one thing: You get Erica, you get out. Wolfy can go looking for this thing, but I don’t want you getting dragged into this. Wait for me."

After a moment, Allison nods. Stiles can't be sure whether she'll actually do it or not, but it's the best he's got. He turns and walks away without another word, nerves and irritation crackling in his fingertips.

She knows better than to call after him, but the silence at his back stings anyways.

By some stroke of luck he manages to find his way back to the house, following the wolfsbane trail which had wilted ever so slightly since Lydia took her leave. The way things were going, he wouldn’t even be surprised if he got lost in the woods. This place was bent on destroying him. The feeling of being watched, like he might glimpse something horrible between two of the trees if he dared to look, had disappeared along with Lydia. Now it just feels like a normal forest, and he’s perfectly comfortable stomping through it by himself. It’s not witches he’s worried about right now.

Allison can take care of herself. To be honest, sometimes Stiles just feels like he’s slowing her down. But other times he’s been the only thing between her and the angry beastie in her blind spot. And right now, her blind spot is full of red eyes and sharp claws. And she’s telling him there’s nothing there.

He knows Allison is smart. He also knows she is capable of being incredibly dumb. She’s a hunter, after all.

He makes a loop around the house—he’s in no hurry to pass by the Martin family again, harmless as they may be. The street is still empty, but the sun is out and somewhere a bird is singing, and the distant sound of traffic is like a lifeline to the real world. It’s not comforting. Danger may be keeping its distance, but Stiles can feel it close by.

He follows the pungent smell of whatever undoubtedly illegal thing Kate is smoking to the window of her SUV—her eyes are  hidden behind her sunglasses, but he can feel her eyes on him. As he taps on the passenger window she releases a jet of smoke before rolling it down.

“Where’s Allison?” Kate asks.

“Not coming,” Stiles says, reaching into the car to unlock the door when Kate makes no move to.

Her eyebrows raise over the edge of her glasses. “The caveman too?”

“Nope.” Stiles slides into the passenger seat and holds her stare. He remembers a nature program talking about how you’re supposed to keep eye contact when faced with dangerous animals. Or maybe it was that you weren’t supposed to make eye contact. He had lost a lot of blood at the time. Most of his television-watching these days was under duress of serious injury. “They’re hanging back to check out the scene, see if Lydia might have left anything we can use. We’re going on without them.”

A smile creeps onto her face. “You two have a fight?”

“No,” Stiles says curtly. It’s as good as an affirmative.

Kate just shakes her head. “Alright, what about?” When Stiles’s teeth stay stubbornly clenched, she gives his shoulder a gentle shove. “Lighten up. She’s my niece. With all the fights we’ve had they should have started handing out prizes. You didn’t want to split up, am I right?” Stiles says nothing. Kate grins. “Hey, don’t worry about it man. Allison can handle herself.”

“I know,” Stiles says quickly. Too quickly. Kate latches onto it instantly.

“What, did she tell you she didn’t need you or something?”

Stiles shoots her a glare. She raises her hand. “Alright, maybe she didn’t. But you’re thinking it, right? It bothers you. Well, don’t let it. Allison was born to do this. But as I'm sure you've seen, even she makes mistakes. Sometimes dangerous ones.”

Stiles says nothing. He doesn't trust himself to.

Kate shrugs and turns the key in the ignition with a powerful thrum. “Well, there’s no reason we can’t be useful while those two are screwing around. We going after the witch?”

Stiles swallows past whatever bitter thing is rising in his throat. He can't worry about Allison and Scott and whatever illicit things they may or may not being doing right now. He just can't deal with it right now. “No good. She could be in another country by now if she wanted to, and I doubt we’ll find her if she doesn’t want to be found. We’ve hit her in the one place we knew she would be—she’ll be smarter about it now.”

“Glad to know you guys truly did blow our best shot at nailing her down,” Kate says. “What do we do now?”

“Same thing we do every day, Pinkie,” Stiles says tiredly. “Go and look at some dead bodies.”

 

 

 

Allison is a pretty good driver. She travels a lot, and knows how to dodge the cops. But right now the effort of going only seven miles over the speed limit is enough to make her teeth crack in her jaw. Even Scott seems twitchy. There’s no way of knowing what they’ll find when they get to their destination.

They hit a stop light. There are two cars that pass the road in front of them, and then the intersection is empty. The light doesn’t change. The tapping of Allison’s foot is enough to make the whole car shiver. It's not like she and Stiles never fight; they argue all the time. But not like this. She'd seen the anger in Stiles's eyes, the betrayal. And for what? He thought she shouldn't trust Scott? Stiles hadn't had a problem with it before Kate got here. Maybe she shouldn't have sent them off together again.

“Any word from Derek?” she asks, fighting her way out of her own head for a minute.

“Not yet,” Scott replies. He’s more on edge than she’s seen him. Granted, Stiles was right—she’s known him for just a few days, really she knows nothing—but when his pack was in danger, Scott got serious.

Mercifully the light changes, and they’re off at a painfully reasonable speed. “I’m sure she’s fine,” Allison lies. But she’s not as good at it as Stiles is, and Scott just nods tersely.

The road gives way behind them as they follow the toneless directions of the GPS to the location Derek’s given them. It’s so weirdly normal, like they’re just trying to find the local bowling alley or something. That doesn’t stop Allison’s toes from squirming in her boots every time they hit a light.

They delve into the back roads, only passing a few cars. Compared to the haze of news and police activity they saw for the past two days, it’s almost as if the town just collectively fell asleep or ran away. Allison wouldn’t blame them. Around the corner they’re met with the shiny black body of Derek’s Camaro pulled off onto the shoulder. The man himself is nowhere in sight. She backs up just in front of it, the tires grinding over the gravel—never hurts to have the advantage if a speedy exit is the order. There are trees on one side and a field on the other, with a line of houses barely visible in the distance. Good place for a picnic. Or an ambush.

The latch of her door opens with a pop, and the outside chill rushes to swallow her up. The weak sunlight is more harm than help, the glare an itch in her eyes. Scott shoots her a look from across the car, raises his head, and takes in a deep breath. Like a weathervane, his head swings to the woods.

“In there?” Allison asks. She could do without another creepy trek through the woods. Dried leaves scuttle across the pavement behind her in agreement.

“Not for long,” Scott says. “They’re coming out.”

Allison nods curtly and leans down for the gun concealed in the side of her door. Scott’s eyes narrow as she checks the cartridge.

“Put that away,” he says firmly.

Allison stares at him. “Not likely. If this goes south I want to have at least some small modicum of protection for myself.”

Scott’s face doesn’t budge. “No guns. This is Erica we’re dealing with.”

“Yeah, Erica and potentially her plus-one,” Allison snaps. Stiles words ring her head whether she wants them to or not. Too trusting. “I’m not going into this unarmed.” Scott looks like he’s about to argue, so Allison jams the gun into her waistband with an air of finality. “Don’t worry. I’m a good shot.”

Before Scott can make a rebuttal there’s a rustling of foliage about forty feet down the road. The branches of a low-growing bush shudder, and someone steps onto the road.

At first Allison thinks she’s covered in dirt, splattered up over the front of her white shirt and all around her neck, crusted in the frizzy strands of her hair and over the tops of her bare feet. Then the color registers, the coppery hues. Erica doesn’t acknowledge them, or walk any further. She hovers by the edge of the road like it’s a river she won’t cross, her head bowed slightly under some kind of weight. She sways in an invisible current.

“She’s been like this for as long as I’ve been with her.” Derek steps out of the trees, his imposing look marred by a few burrs stuck on his shirt and jacket. He looks grim, but then again that doesn’t seem to be especially abnormal. “I found her while I was on patrol. I think she came back when she heard you guys pull up.”

“What happened to her?” Allison asks, muscling through the silence that closes up her throat. Her words feel too sensitive, tripwires lying taught across each one.

“I don’t know,” Derek says. “But nothing good. That blood isn’t hers.”

Scott takes a step forward, not seeming to register what Derek just said. “Erica,” he calls out softly. “Can you hear me?”

There’s no sign that she does. Her body is twitching ever so slightly almost like its moving in time to a song. Scott moves forward.

“Scott,” Allison hisses. Her senses are prickling, a rolling wave of goosebumps that say Scott should definitely not be doing what he’s doing. Predictably he doesn’t listen.

“It’s okay,” he says in a low voice. “I got this.”

Grinding her teeth, Allison forces herself to stay back. Scott moves forward slowly, his hands raised like he’s calming a spooked horse. Erica still doesn’t see or hear him. She’s leaning on a tree now with her hair hanging down in front of her face. The closer Scott gets the more she sags, until she slides to the ground like the bones have been sucked out of her body. Allison’s hand tightens on her empty fist, but there’s no sudden blur of an attack. After a short moment, Scott beckons them forward.

He’s got one of his arms around the back of her neck, another flitting around to take her pulse or brush the hair back from her face. She wasn’t looking so good at a distance, and up close it’s even worse. Her eyes are still half-open, yellow and staring at nothing, but her breath still comes in fast, shallow pants. The gore splattered on her clothes and skins smells exactly as you’d expect it to. Her teeth are sharp and there are things stuck in between them. Allison doesn’t venture a guess as to what.

“Jesus,” she mutters under her breath. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Scott says. His voice is all popping rivets and groaning metal—something in him is breaking, Allison can tell. “Her heart is racing. They must have given her something, or, I don’t know…” He drags his hand over his face, leaving a red smear on his cheek.

Derek crouches beside him. “She’s still awake. Maybe you can get through to her.”

Scott nods. “I’ll try.” He lays his palm across Erica’s forehead and closes his eyes.

Allison slowly kneels beside them both. She waits for something dramatic to happen, a flash of light or a choir of angels—whatever special effects that freaky werewolf magic might require. Nothing.

“What’s he doing?” Allison mutters out of the corner of her mouth. Derek glances up, tension radiating from his body. She can feel it coming off him like waves of heat from an oven.

“Alphas and their betas have a deep bond. He might be able to sense what happened to her,” Derek says quietly.

“What, like telepathy?” Allison says. “Is that a thing?”

“No, they can’t share thoughts—just feelings, vague perceptions.” Derek glances at her in annoyance. “You’re a hunter. Isn’t it your job to know this?”

“Not if it doesn’t help me kill you,” Allison shot back. “How long is this supposed to take, anyways?”

“Can you guys shut up for five minutes?” Scott growls. “This is kind of important.”

Instead of fighting down the impulse to exchange barbs with Derek, Allison rises to her feet and walks a few paces away. The tree line looms uncomfortably close, still and empty for now, but she can only see about ten feet further before the underbrush closes in. Whatever it is that’s they’ve been hunting or vice-versa, it could be right here. She could be staring at it right now without even knowing it. If she took just a few steps forward, she could even touch it.

Behind her, Scott is bowed over his work with Derek watching him just as intently. Erica has looked livelier. Basically, they’re sitting ducks.

“I think we should move her,” Allison says. Because you know what they say about moving your wounded, but if it’s in the interests of also not becoming wounded then she thinks it’s only fair. Scott doesn’t seem to have heard—Derek definitely heard, but is ignoring her. She grinds her teeth and scans the trees again. Still nothing. The field and the farmhouse on the other side of the road are wide and empty as well, almost picturesque in the sunlight. It makes her nervous. At any second she thinks she might see someone running out the door, tiny in the distance, waving their arms to warn them of something, anything. The feeling makes no sense, so she shakes it off. Lydia again, playing with her head? If the big bad isn't far, maybe she wouldn’t' be either.

There’s a quiet noise behind her—when she turns she sees Scott’s head jerking back, his eyes flying open and turning very red. Derek grabs his arm as Allison runs back to his side.

“What’s happening?” she asks. Derek doesn’t respond. “Derek, what can I do?”

“Get back!” he snarls, lashing out with a hand to her shoulder that sends her sprawling backwards. When she sits up, Erica has Scott by the throat.

Her teeth are bared in a snarl inches from his face, claws boring into Scott's skin but he doesn’t seem to notice. Allison scrambles to her feet, unsure of whether she should be staying back or lunging into the fray, her gun a useless weight in her hand. She’s a good shot. But not that good.

Derek lunges forward to slam Erica down to the ground with a roar. Seeing her chance, Allison dives forward and shoves Scott away from them. The second he breaks contact with Erica his body jolts like she pulled him off a live wire as she drags him away. Behind them Derek and Erica are in a frenzy, a blur of matted yellow hair and swiping claws. She doesn’t fight like a wild animal—she lacks the sense of self-preservation. Derek’s claws slash into her skin and she doesn’t even notice, doesn’t try to block. Derek's roars shake the air.

Something smashes into the side of Allison's face while her eyes are focused on the fight. She lets go of Scott and stumbles backwards, not a moment too soon; the next time his hand swings for her head, his claws are out. He lunges for her a second later, and it's all she can do to brace her boot on his chest to keep him away. He's thrashing and snarling at her, at nothing, spinning around to rip through enemies behind him that aren't there. When his back is turned, Allison dives forward to tackle him. There's a sudden sharp flash of pain on her arm.

“Snap out of it, Scott,” she yells, hauling his back off the ground to slam it down again. He goes slack like she hit him with a tranq.

When she looks back Erica is gone, run into the woods, leaving Derek on his knees and panting for breath. They exchange a look—the goods are shaken up, but they’re both alright. The four gashes on her arm didn't go deep, but they did tear the shit out of her favorite jacket. Better that than her muscles. She turns her attention back to Scott, who is staring up into the sky with a face as blank as Erica’s. Oh. That’s not good at all.

“Scott,” she says, scuffling over to sit by his shoulder. “Are you with us?”

“I’m here,” he says, faint but immediate. Something in Allison’s chest unwinds instantly.

“What happened?” she says. Derek settles down on his other side, a shell-shocked expression on his face. There’s enough of that to go around. Scott sits up slowly, his eyes passing over them without seeing.

“I felt something,” he says. “In her head. Moving stuff around. Turning the soil.”

Allison and Derek glance at each other behind his back. “What the hell does that mean?” Allison asks softly.

Scott shakes his head, like whatever he found in Erica is still clinging to him somehow. Maybe it is. “Something made her do it. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t.”

Without hesitating, Allison squeezes Scott’s shoulder. When he turns to look at her it’s with an expression like he’s drowning and she’s the wreckage he’s clinging to. Allison wishes something inside her would stop floating off the ground. She’s no one’s life boat.

“Scott,” she says quietly, “what did Erica do?”

The silence is answer enough. Slowly Allison rises to her feet, leaving Derek and Scott huddling on the pavement. She takes a few steps away to lean on the car and drags her hands over her face. Eric disappeared, and the same night another person was murdered. The next day she turned up feral and covered in someone else's blood. Even without Scott's input, it wasn't a hard puzzle to crack.

Her hand slipped into her pocket to get out her phone. Stiles had texted her: _Everything okay?_

She blew a breath out of her nose, shifting her gaze back to Derek and Scott, and the flecks of blood sprinkling the asphalt. Her arm gave a ragged throb. Scott and his pack were dangerous—Stiles had said as much, and she’d never doubted it. The only difference was she knew that they needed Scott’s help, where Stiles wouldn’t hesitate to cut all ties. Hell, maybe he’d go after them himself. At the very least, Kate would find out; and that would be the final nail in the coffin. Allison had had enough of those.

She lifted her phone. Her fingers formed the words. _Everything's fine._

There was a time and a place for the truth.

 

 

_Earlier…_

Kate’s car smelled weird. Sort of a new-car smell, but more like a used car that they’re trying to pass off as new. Like the upholstery has been dirty and cleaned so many times that both the bad smells and the good compete with each other. That is, what Stiles can actually detect under the odor of Kate’s cigarettes.

She’s got the windows down at least, and it’s all Stiles can do not to lean his head out and gasp in the fresh air. Not like he minds the smell of smoke, but it smells like Kate dried up the frogs he dissected in high school and then rolled them into a joint. Whatever it is seems to be working for her though, because she’s got a knowing smile on her face.

“You’re very chipper all of a sudden,” he says when he can’t take the silence anymore.

“Can’t go wrong with a body,” she replies. “Dead men tell plenty of tales, if you know how to ask.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Stiles mutters. Kate doesn’t seem to have heard. Probably for the best. She might get the idea that his corpse would make a better conversation partner.

His fingers itch for a wheel or a phone or a weapon, something to do. Normally when Allison drives he’s reading a map, cleaning a knife, shouting frantic instructions over the sounds of angry pursuit. It’s this sitting still that he can’t stand—he wasn’t built for it. He’d much rather be with Allison right now, but apparently she’d rather not have him. With a sigh he pinches the bridge of his nose. This really isn’t the time to be getting petty. So why can’t he seem to let this go?

“So you and Allison seem very close,” Kate says cheerfully.

Stiles slides down into his seat, repressing a groan. The last thing he wants is to have a freakin’ chat. “How much further is it?”

Kate grins and predictably ignores his question. “I’m just saying, it’s really big of you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and grinds his teeth. He shouldn’t answer that. She’s obviously messing with him. He should just sit here silently, plug his ears, think happy thoughts…oh, god damn it. “What’s really big of me?”

“Letting her and Scott sleep together.”

Stiles scrambles to sit up in his chair, all flailing limbs and disbelieving eyes. “What? Where the hell are you getting that…from.” Even as he’s saying it his brain gives him the play-by-play of the last few days, all the time Allison and Scott have been spending together, how she trusts him despite the whole werewolf thing, the way they looked at each other sometimes.

Well, shit. Clearly Scott was attractive, though totally not Stiles's type. But Allison...

“It was pretty obvious from when I first got there,” Kate is saying. “I’ve never seen Allison so comfortable around someone like that. Well, excluding—you know.” She makes a vague gesture in his direction. “Anyways, I can hardly blame her. That guy's got it. And there’s nothing like a good lay to get your senses sharp for a big hunt. They’re probably going at it right now.”

Stiles turns away from her grinning face and focuses on the scenery flying by their window. The glass is cold and damp on his forehead, but it helps him focus. What or who Allison chooses to do in her free time isn’t his problem right now. He just needs to keep Kate occupied until they deal with Erica, and then he can give Allison the talk. That is, the talk about how banging werewolves while on mission (or at all) is definitely not near the top of the list of things that are okay.

Still, he can't help himself from sending her a text. The reply he gets a few minutes later is enough to make him feel a little better. At least she and Scott aren't so busy doing something that she can't text. Whether that was dying, or the other thing.

“We’re here,” Kate says. Sure enough, when Stiles looks up he sees a bustle of flashing blue lights and police uniforms. Yikes. This is pretty dicey, even for them. A policewoman with a face as grey and hard as a rock wall already approaches their car, holding up a hand for them to stop. There’s no way they can sweet-talk their way past all this without some serious evidence to back them up.

“What’s our cover?” Stiles hisses, watching the officer  make her way up to the window.

“I got this,” Kate says, rolling down the window and turning her smile up to eleven. “Morning, officer.”

“This road is closed,” the woman says, her gaze travelling from Kate to Stiles with no sympathy. “You and your son will have to take a detour.”

“ _Son_? Give me a break,” Stiles groans. Kate silences him with a short gesture.

“Well, about that.” She digs into her coat and pulls out a badge—a very official looking badge. “I’m Special Agent White, this is Agent Gillis. We heard there was something around here worth looking at.”

The officer leans forward to scrutinize the badge. “You guys aren’t wearing suits.”

“You watch too much TV,” Kate shoots back. “We prefer to be more discreet.”

The officer isn’t done. Her eyes study them both. “Pretty young to be FBI.”

“Oh, you’re making me blush,” Kate says. “I do try my hardest to keep that youthful glow.”

“I was talking about him.”

“The kid? Well he’s a trainee, obviously. That’s why he doesn’t have a badge. Jesus, do I have to spell everything out for you guys?” Kate flips from charming to abrasive as easily as snapping her fingers—which makes sense, because all she has to do is stop acting. She leans out the car to squint at the officer’s badge before looking back up into her face with a sneer. “Alright, Officer Malin. You’re familiar with the concept of obstruction of justice, right? Well trust me when I say you don’t want to tangle with the federal version of that. My boss will have you directing traffic at off-brand Disneyworld before my report is an hour late. So how about you hop back in your cruiser and move it aside, so we can get a better parking spot?”

Kate might as well have reached out of the car and shoved a rotten lemon in officer Malin’s mouth. Throughout the whole tirade Stiles could only sit in horrified silence. The woman straightens up, hooking her thumbs through her belt and glaring at them. For a second Stiles thinks she’s just going to stand there until they leave, but finally she turns around and climbs back into her car. At that point Stiles can finally stop focusing on not shitting his pants, because seriously? How did that work?

“I refuse to believe that is your actual strategy,” Stiles says as the car pulls forward. “You just yell at people until they do what you want?”

Kate shoots a cheery smile and a thumbs-up to officer Malin as they pass by. “You don’t yell. You just say the thinks you usually would yell in a quiet and explanatory tone of voice. Threats help as well. What really matters is that you’re shoving the other guy down before they see how weak your own footing is.”

Stiles nods slowly, though he hates himself for it. It’s smart—he can respect that. Doesn’t make Kate feel any less like a lit stick of dynamite in his hand.

They’re waved to a halt again just outside the slash of yellow police tape. This time all Kate has to do is flash her badge to make people begin edging away from her. Stiles walks quickly on her heels, his hands in his pockets. He would have expected them to be getting dirty looks, people muttering about them intruding on local jurisdiction. But the cops just stand around and watch them pass, their faces slack and tired. Maybe it's time for the actual FBI to get involved. These guys look like they're in over their heads.

Kate snaps her fingers at a young officer hovering outside the area blocked-off by cones and tape. “Show us the body, kiddo.” A flash of her badge makes him leap into action. They duck under the tape and start down the stretch of road, empty but for a few officers collecting evidence and a cherry-picker parked a few feet away. Tire tracks are two black lines down the road, swerving wildly before coming to a stop. The truck itself is nowhere in sight, but he can practically hear the squealing brakes.

“You got here just in time,” the cop is saying. “We were just about to cut it down.”

Kate cranes her neck back to where the basket of the cherry picker is situated. Stiles does the same. It’s hard to see anything—the canopy goes pretty high, and the sky behind it is an uncompromising blue—but there’s a dark shape up there too dense to be foliage. Inevitably his eyes travel down. There’s a splatter mark on the pavement. There seem to be some sort of…chunks in it. He can’t seem to look away.

“Do you have an ID on the vic yet?” Kate is asking.

 “No ma’am. We haven’t found a vehicle or any form of identification on the body.”

“What about the facial recognition databases?” Kate fires off.

The cop pauses. “There’s, uh, there’s not much left to scan. We're running the dental now, but...”

Kate steps past him, her eyes raised. “Take us up.”

The bucket of the cherry-picker moves forward with a lurch after they’ve both climbed inside, Stiles’s hands clamped white-knuckled on the railing. It’s a good thing Kate’s ditched the cigarettes for now because he’s pretty sure the smell might actually make him hurl. Then again he might do that anyways. Today was full of surprises.

“You alright, kid?” she asks as they’re jostled with the movement of the bucket. They’re getting closer and closer to the dark shape above, but Stiles can’t peel his eyes off the ground. He forces himself to swallow.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says. Showing weakness would only chum the water.  

“I used to have a thing about heights when I was younger,” Kate says as if she’s reading his mind. “Used to lock up just like you are. That was until I got thrown off a cliff by a pissed-off ghost that one time. I’m fine with them now.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” he mutters. “My feet stay firmly inside of this basket.”

Kate has stopped listening. They’re almost there.

The smell hits him first, a wave of fetid air so strong it’s like something is being physically shoved down his throat. The buzz of the flies is a static undertone to the engine’s whirring below them as they’re finally raised into place. What they find is so far from pretty it gives the word new meaning.

It’s less of a person, more a hunk of meat. There’s no hair, skin, or defining features left—just slick, gummy red all twisted around the branches.

“Like a leopard,” he hears himself say.

Kate looks at him strangely. “What?”

He clears his throat, turns away from the body to give his brain a chance to catch up with his intuition. “Leopards. They stash the remains of a kill in a tree to stop other animals from getting at it.”

“So you think our beastie might be back for seconds?” Consciously or not, her hand flits to the bulge of her firearm.

Stiles shakes his head. “I’m thinking no. Too much commotion around it now. Not to mention that it could have picked any tree in the woods where we might never have found the body, but instead it picked one over a road where it would be discovered in a matter of hours. Plus whatever it is already ate its fill. You can see the, uh, tooth marks.”

“This isn’t normal werewolf behavior. Normally they eat the heart, or nothing at all. There’s not a scrap of skin left on this guy. Peeled him like a banana.”

“Do you think it was intentional?” Stiles can’t bring himself to turn around but he can feel Kate’s eyes on him. “You don’t just kill someone by flaying them and then hang their body over a road where someone’s bound to find it. It means something—at the very least, it’s personal. In ancient history it was used as a method of punishment and execution, and the skin would be hung up as a warning. I guess the rest of the body counts as well…”

Kate is quiet for a minute. “You’re one smart cookie, Stiles. I can see why Allison keeps you around.”

“Yeah, I try,” he mutters. “Anything else we should be concerned about, or can we get the hell out of here?”

“Just a sec.” He hears Kate move around, muttering softly under her breath. After a moment she tugs his sleeve. “Hey, take a look at this.”

Stiles winces. “I’d really rather not.”

“Haven’t you ever seen a body before?”

“Of course I have. It’s just never been an experience I’ve been eager to replicate.” He grits his teeth and takes a breath. Just one quick look, then they can leave. Try to think of it like it’s just an animal. It’s not strictly untrue, after all.

He lets his eyes settle on the patch of not-skin that Kate points out to him—for a minute he sees nothing but chewed-up flesh, but suddenly a pattern leaps out at him. Three pronged spirals.

“Triskelion,” Kate says. “I’ve seen it before. It mean anything to you?”

Stiles turns away, partially to avoid upchucking and partially to hide his face from Kate. “I don’t think so.” This symbol has turned up far too many times for it to be coincidence. But symbols, ritual murder, cryptic messages—how is he supposed to fit any of this together? It’s like someone is stringing them along, feeding them useless hints to try and keep them chasing the carrot while they laughed from the sidelines. Was that paranoia? Was paranoia unwarranted at this point?

“This was an incredibly neat job,” Kate muses. Her face is just inches from the surface of the corpse—the smell doesn’t seem to bother her at all. Stiles feels sick just watching. “It might not be obvious, because whatever it was went to town on the body afterwards, but the skin was removed with almost no damage to the flesh underneath.”

Stiles swallows. “Surgical?”

“Not even that.” Kate flips out a device from her jacket pocket and starts scanning it over the body. A high whine sounds in the air, rocketing up into decibels that drive into Stiles’s ears like needles. It’s only a few seconds before Kate snaps the reader shut with a nod to herself. “Thought so.”

“What was that thing?” Stiles asks, rubbing the side of his head like he can crush the headache budding there.

“EMF detector. State of the art—would beep if a ghost so much as sneezed in this spot forty years ago. Don’t you guys have one?”

“Yeah, we do,” Stiles says. “I’ve just never heard ours make that noise before.”

“Probably because you’ve never come across readings so high. Clear into the end of the red.”

“Of course they are.” Stiles can’t help glancing back at their over-exfoliated friend for a minute. Another hint, leading nowhere.  “So what does that mean?”

“It means that if a werewolf did turn this guy into a side of pork, it didn’t do it alone,” Kate replies. “We’re talking extra-supernatural. You don’t get that kind of reading from one of our furry friends.” She looks at him dead-on, her face unreadable. “Whatever it is, it’s got power—like maybe a certain witch you guys were getting all huggy with.”

Stiles says nothing. He might not be as quick to give their scary friends the benefit of the doubt, but he had really believed that Lydia didn’t want to hurt anyone. Then again, what Lydia wanted and what Lydia did hadn’t seemed to mesh up in recent memory. If she had killed this guy, was that their fault? They'd stopped Kate from killing her, after all.

His phone vibrates in his pocket before he can respond. He glances at the text ID: Allison again.

“Romeo and Juliet done screwing around?” Kate asks.

 _At the room. Come when you can and don’t take your time._ “They want us back in the room as soon as we can make it,” Stiles relays. “Sounds important.”

“Alright, let’s get you down,” Kate says, not unkindly. It’s about as nice as she’s likely to be to him, so he takes what he can get. As the bucket descends and he takes the first breath of reasonably fresh air in the past five minutes, it’s hard not to be at least a little disgruntled that this whole thing wasn’t a disaster. He and Kate actually don’t make a bad team. What does that say about him?

Back on solid ground, the walk back to the SUV is a brisk one. There are a few officers who look like they want a chat, maybe a closer look at that badge of Kate’s, but the car doors slam before they have a chance to ask. As they pull out past the police barricade Kate gives officer Malin a wink.

“The Bureau thanks you for your cooperation,” she says as the cruise by. The look Malin shoots them could have broken their taillights.

They’ve been driving for five minutes before Kate speaks up. “Stiles, I know this job can be hard sometimes. It’s easy to want to see the best in people, even when they don’t strictly fit the definition of people.”

“I’m not afraid of  killing monsters,” Stiles says. “As long as I’m sure that that’s what they are.”

“But how can you be sure?” Kate insists. “Don’t you think that every evil thing you’ve ever killed tried to be good once? How many spirits do you think started out trying to comfort their loved ones? But it’s only a matter of time before they turn angry. I’m sure there are plenty of werewolves out there that don’t want to hurt people, but when the full moon comes around that doesn’t matter anymore. You can’t start portioning out which monsters are bad enough for you to kill. Give them long enough, and they all are.”

Stiles shakes his head. “Maybe, maybe not. But when they do, that’s when Allison and I will be there. Not a second before.”

Kate snorts. “That’s a nice ideology you got there, Stiles. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“You don’t have all the answers, you know,” he snaps. “Since when can an EMF pick up witch magic? Ghosts or poltergeists sure, but unless Lydia is secretly a giant electromagnet we wouldn’t get those kinds of readings.”

Kate stares him down, which is really not safe driving procedure but apparently she’s making a point. “Kid, it hurts to be wrong. When you’re a hunter, it hurts other people even more. Stop denying the facts. You’ve found exactly one supernatural entity in this town that’s packing the kind of firepower needed to do this to a man. How are you still making excuses?”

“It just doesn’t add up,” Stiles insists. “When things don’t fit together there’s always a reason.”

In the wrong light, Stiles might actually confuse the look on Kate’s face with sympathy. “Sometimes figuring it out isn’t worth the collateral damage.”

After a tense silence, Kate reaches out and clicks on the radio. A burst of obnoxious mariachi music blasts through the air, which Kate viciously flips to a news station. They ride on with a quiet explanation of local traffic patterns playing between them.

"Now we have some new information  about the latest grizzly murder which occurred outside Beacon Hills last night," the announcer says, jolting Stiles into alertness. He scrambles to crank up the volume but Kate beats him to it.

"Police have just released the victim's name—Victor Mendez—but appear to have no other information about his origin, or a possible motive for his death. This reporter wonders when the reign of terror over Beacon Hills will end at last..."

"Shit," Kate mutters, clicking off the radio. "I know that name."

Stiles looks at her in surprise. "What? Who is it?”

"I don't know, it's so familiar," Kate says. A frown crosses her face. “Oh, dammit.”

“Should I be worried?” Stiles asks.

“Oh, definitely. But hold off on the panic until we get back to the room. There's something I gotta check. Then we'll see how screwed we really are.”

 

 

 

The sink fills with water. Allison stands in front of it, the bathroom door closed and locked, holding up her jeans under the sickly fluorescent light. The knees are caked with dirt, with little specs of red blossoming where she had hit the gravel hard. Her reflection is a threat hanging just in front of her face that she tries hard not to see. It’s easier to focus on the stain. She's seeing dirt everywhere these days.

Gritting her teeth, she tosses her jeans to the floor and drains the sink without so much as touching them to the water. She’s tired of scrubbing clothes that will be ruined in a day. There's no point. Better to just move on.

It's not like she hasn't lied to Stiles before. If he ever found out that she liked the prequels better than the original Star Wars movies, she'd be a dead woman. But this was different than just saying something that wasn't true. This was keeping a secret. It felt much heavier.

A knock on the door sends a jolt through her. "Allison? Are you okay in there?"

"I'm fine," she says, fighting down the tiredness that threatens to smother her voice to a whisper, because she is so very, very tired. If things could just go back to how they were, without Kate or Scott or the million complications needling at her brain—but they can't. She's stuck here, and she has to deal.

Turning around, she smoothes the invisible creases out of the dress hanging behind her. It's a pretty blue number, soft, comfortable, easy to move in; plus it has pockets. It's her favorite piece of clothing that she owns, one she bought with her own money instead of stealing. Sort of a security blanket. She sure as hell needs it now.

Only once she puts the dress on does she let herself look in the mirror. There are dark circles under her eyes—nothing new there. Leaning forward, she stares at herself and tries to hold in her head the exact shape of the lie she's going to tell Stiles. There's no flicker of guilt, no dead giveaway. Maybe that's worse. But she'll have time to continue this round of self-criticism when people stop dying.

She slides the folding knife retrieved from her pants into her dress and turns to the door, but a soft clink makes her hand pause on the knob. Reaching back into the pocket of her dress, she feels past the cold metal of the knife to find something smaller nestled in the fold. What she pulls out is a long fine chain with a pendant attached, which looks like silver tarnished with spots of black that won't yield to her fingernail. The details of it have been warped, but it looks like there had been the design of some sort of animal on it.

Something about it is painfully familiar, like a splinter jammed into Allison's brain. She's seen it before. That realization creeps up into her brain and squats there, refusing to leave despite the fact that she has no idea how it could have gotten into the pocket of her favorite dress, one she hasn't worn in weeks. Maybe she had picked it up and forgotten about it—out of character, but not impossible. Either way, there's something about it that gives her a sense of comfort, like she was meant to have it. She fights down the niggling sense of recognition in the back of her skull and wraps the necklace around her wrist. She'll deal with it later.

Scott turns away from the window as soon as she steps out of the bathroom. He's looking even more haggard than her, but a weak smile crosses his features all the same that Allison can't bring herself to return. She settles down on the chair where she tossed her jacket, absently fingering the four slashes torn into the fabric of the arm to avoid making conversation. Impossible to fix without it being noticeable. That's not going to change, but she keeps turning it over in her fingers and poking them through as she tries not to worry about Stiles.

She’s not worried Kate would hurt him; her aunt was too smart for that. But there was plenty of damage she could do without laying a finger on him, damage Allison’s already starting to see the cracks of. Her fingers tease at a loose thread from her jacket as she waits for the sound of footsteps at the door.

Scott, on the other hand, is much more sedate. And that isn't much of a comfort either, the way his eyes glaze over and he barely seems to be breathing. Allison plants her forehead in her palm and sighs through her nose. Her head throbs. Her thoughts can barely penetrate the haze.

"You okay?" It's less of a question, more of an invitation. Do you want to talk about it. Are you on the verge of self destructing. At the very least she gets the satisfaction of seeing Scott's eyelids flutter as he comes back to the room. Wherever he had been couldn't have been good.

“Sorry. Yes. I’m fine.” His fingers drag over his eyes like he can peel off the veil that’s been over them ever since they lost Erica in the woods again. Allison doesn’t know how their not-mind-meld worked, whether Erica could have carried off a piece of him in her skull and left him all dull and lifeless. Probably he’s just tired.

He looks up again to meet her gaze with a weak smile that is almost immediately replaced by a frown. "What happened to your head?"

Allison jerks her head off her hand. "Nothing. I must have hit it or something."

Scott stands up. He nods purposefully. "Right. I'll get you a cold cloth."

Allison starts to protest, because she doesn't need to be babied—but then again, Scott's up and walking around and even forming complete sentences, and that's better than he had been since their face-down with Erica. So she stays quiet, stretches back onto the pillows and closes her eyes as the sound of the faucet splutters up from the bathroom.

"We need to talk about what happened back there," Allison says after a while. As much as it sucks to break up their brief moments of relaxation, it has to be done. "What happened with Erica, and what happened with you."

There's nothing but running water from the bathroom, and the occasional sound of a towel being wrung out. Allison opens her eyes and looks towards the open door. She can just see part of the mirror, and Scott's downturned face in it. His face is blank, but his eyes bore into the twisting of the towel like it's the only thing in the world that exist. Allison watches the ritual for a while. Just a few days ago she had stood at that sink, before she and Scott had even met, and wrung the blood out of her clothes. It had swirled over the porcelain before disappearing into the pipes, but the stain of it never completely washed away. For some reason she wants to tell Scott about it, how she had scrubbed and picked and clawed at it, until her hands were dissolving in the hot water and the cloth was practically torn apart, but she never got the stain out. But she doesn't tell him. Because that's not what she does.

Eventually Scott's hands pause in their work, and he looks up to see her watching him. Something passes between them before he looks away; he shakes his head.

"I don't know what happened, exactly. Whatever was in her head, it was like it... reached out to me. And I didn't know what I was doing."

"I understand," Allison says. "And I understand that if that's the case, then Erica must not have known what she was doing either, when she—well, you know." She sits up, resting her hands on her knees. "What I'm worried about is what we should tell Stiles."

Scott looks at her in surprise. "Why not just tell him the truth?"

"'Hi Stiles, Erica almost definitely murdered someone before attacking us, which hey, Scott did too, but it's all A-okay because a little voice in their head told them to do it'?" She raises an eyebrow. "You can see how that wouldn't go over well. Especially after what he said earlier about us trusting you too much."

The faucet creaks as Scott turns off the water, bracing his hands on either side of the basin and meeting her eyes in the mirror. "And do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Trust me too much."

Allison shrugs, rubs the back of her neck, finds something else to look at other than Scott's eyes. "Not the way I see it. You've given me no reason to think I shouldn't."

"I could have hurt you."

"But you didn't," Allison says sharply. "Look man, you've proven yourself to me already, okay? I don't need anyone else telling me who I can and can't trust."

Eventually Scott lowers his head. Allison nods. "So we only tell Stiles what he has to know. That something drafted Erica off our team, and whatever it is, it can spread."

Scott steps out of the bathroom, the cold towel in his hand. He steps up to the side of Allison's bed and, after a second, holds it out to her.

She takes one end before he lets go, and holds his gaze. "I know you don't want to lie. I don't either. But I'm worried about Stiles. This stuff with Kate, it's thrown him off balance. I don't want to add anything more to his plate that we can't deal with ourselves." Scott lets go, his hand falling to his side. He doesn't argue, and that has to be enough.

Suddenly the lock clicks, and the door bursts open. Kate storms in with Stiles on her heels—Allison's hand goes for her gun before she sees Kate dive for the remote.

"What are the local news channels?" she asks tersely.

"33, 34, and 40," Stiles rattles off. Kate adjusts the set accordingly.

"What the hell is going on?" Allison asks. "Should I be getting my gear ready?"

Kate just shushes her, leaning forward on the end of the bed as the reporters laugh and shuffle their papers between stories. "It should be coming on any minute."

The camera focuses on one of the reporter as she tosses her blonde hair and turns in her chair. "This just in. Police have identified the body of Beacon Hills' latest victim as _Victor Marquez_ , who was not in fact a resident of the town, and has no family in the area." A picture of the unfortunate Mr. Mendez flashes on the screen from what looks like it was edited out of a mug shot—a stern face, dark eyes, and what looks like a scar travelling down his neck.

"I knew it!" Kate cries, leaping to her feet. "I worked with that guy on a wendigo case outside of Houston. He's a hunter."

Allison's eyebrows shoot up. "Are you sure?"

Kate nods. "Absolutely. I wouldn't forget that ugly fucker's face in a million years. He stole my damn glock."

"So why does this matter?" Stiles asks. "I mean, Beacon Hills is a sort of murder hotspot right now. Makes sense that we're not the only hunters sniffing around."

Kate's face is dark with thought, her eyes fixed on her hands. When she looks up there's a glint of something in her eyes. "Do you have a list of all the victims you've connected with this case?"

"No, but I can get you one in a minute," Stiles says, sliding into his chair and opening his laptop. "Do you want animal slaughters and strange phenomena as well?"

"Just the vics." Kate taps her fingers impatiently as Stiles rattles off the keys of his keyboard. A few seconds later he picks it up and hands it to her, a list of names on the screen.

"Thanks," Kate says, scooping it up with one hand and making for the door. With the other she's already dialing on her phone. "I'll be back in a bit. Gotta call a friend."

She kicks the door shut behind her with a loud bam, leaving a tender silence behind. Whatever Kate was on to, Allison wasn't sure whether she should hope it was big or not. On the one hand, they needed all the info they could get. On the other, she was going to do her best to keep it all away from her aunt.

Stiles eases back onto the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he stares from Allison to Scott. It's not a friendly position. Allison's stomach twists; clearly his day trip with Kate did nothing to ease the tension they'd left each other with. She cleared her throat and decided to forge ahead.

"Don't suppose you have any idea what she's thinking?"

Stiles shrugs dispassionately. "Who knows. Maybe she wants to see if she recognizes any of the other names."

He's strangely quiet. Stiles and quiet are two words she rarely places in the same sentence, and never in a good way. He seems thoughtful, or more accurately brooding. "How did it go with Kate?" Allison asks pointedly.

"I'm alive and with all my parts, aren't I?" he sighs. There's a tiredness to him, something painful pushing through the film behind his eyes that wasn't there before. "We went to the crime scene. Luckily for you, Kate didn't question it. We bluffed our way in, had a look, got out. No snags."

Something about the way he's saying it doesn't read right with Allison, but he wouldn't lie about something so important. Whatever's bothering him, it must be something else. And if he doesn't want to talk about it, there's no way she's worming it out of him. "Alright, I'm glad to hear it."

"That's not all that happened, though. We found something at the crime scene you're going to want to see." He takes out his phone, flips through it for a minute. "You might want to hold onto your lunch."

Allison leans forward to inspect the image on his screen. At first all he sees is the red, until she can fully grasp what she's looking at. Her stomach flips. Scott jerks back, turning away. "Jesus. What could do that to a person?"

"Look closer." His fingers circle over an area on a screen, some kind of pattern to the carnage. Allison pushes down her nausea and inspects it carefully. Scott has wandered off by the window, his eyes haunted. Allison won't begrudge him that. Not when they know who did this.

Suddenly it comes to her. "Triskelion."

Stiles nods. "Carved right into the body."

"You could have just told us," Allison says with a hint of irritation. "No need for a picture show."

"I just wanted you both to see what we're dealing with here." He shoots a pointed look at Scott's back. "You'll have to learn to cope if we're going to take down whatever sick freak is messed-up enough to do this to someone."

Scott whirls around. The pain in his eyes is hard to see. Stiles tenses up, his fingers automatically trailing to the knife hidden at his waist, but Scott isn't attacking. He doesn't say a word.

"We have some news as well," Allison says quietly.

Something occurs to Stiles. He scans the room a second time: "Where's Erica?"

Allison looks to Scott—it's his right to talk about it. But his face has caved in, his mouth hardened and his eyes dark as he leans cross-armed on the wall. Allison takes a breath.

"When we caught up with Erica, she wasn't herself. She wasn't responding to our voices, seemed to have difficulty moving. Scott tried to reach out to her through their pack link, and...well." She pauses, shooting another look at Scott.

Stiles's eyebrows raise. "And? I appreciate your storytelling, but get to the point." Scott looks up. He's about to speak.

"She ran away," Allison says quickly. "We couldn't catch up with her before she disappeared into the forest."

Stiles glances between the two of them. He's a smart guy. He won't' be missing the meaningful looks, the pointed interruptions. Sure enough, his eyes narrow. "What, that's it? She ran away?"

Allison nods stiffly. "There was something wrong with her. Scott said it was like something was in her head, messing with her. She didn't seem to know who we were, or where she was. Derek is tracking her again, but she's gotten crafty. He's not sure when we'll catch up with her again."

Stiles is quiet for a minute. His face is turned down so that Allison can't see it, but she can imagine the expressions herding across it—thoughtfulness, incredulity, maybe even worry? He and Erica hadn't exactly been close, but they'd worked together at least once. But that didn't have to mean anything. A lot had happened since then.

"How do you know something was controlling her?" he says at last.

"Scott felt it. Some kind of sixth werewolf sense thing." She turns to Scott for an explanation, hoping he can wrestle down his honest streak for long enough to spit out a lie.

"It felt like some sort of presence," Scott says after a minute. Allison hears the way he picks his words carefully, arranges them into sentences like rocks in a sand garden. "It's like there was another person right there with her, or maybe instead of her. I didn't get much before I had to pull away."

Stiles glances at Allison sharply, like he's going to say something. She gets the feeling it's not something she'd want to hear, but instead he just shakes his head. "The triskelion wasn't the only thing we found at the crime scene. The EMP readings were in the red—not something that would register from a werewolf kill. Or even a witch."

Allison's brain kicks into overdrive, a long list of possible candidates flashing behind her eyes. "So what are we thinking? Spirit activity?"

Stiles holds his hands up in defeat. "Why not? We already have witches and werewolves. Might as well go for the complete set."

"It would have to be a very powerful spirit," Allison says. "Strong enough to possess someone, let alone physically manifest." Her heart beats with excitement.

"It's not unheard of," Stiles says. "If something is mad enough when you kill it, or has enough unfinished business, there's not a force on earth that can stop it." A cool smile crosses his lips. "Except us, of course."

"Well this changes everything." Allison sits back, twisting the towel thoughtfully in her hands. Her heart beats faster with excitement now that they're finally on the scent. "Spiritual possession would explain what was happening to Lydia and Erica. We need to start looking for violent deaths, anything that could leave someone anchored here—"

"Where to start?" Stiles asks. "Seems like the only way to go in this town is to die bloody."

"Well whatever it is, it had to have been before all of this started," Allison says. She turns to Scott, who had been watching their volley with eyebrows raised. "You've lived here for long enough to know this stuff. Can you come up with a list of anything that might have left a spirit behind in the recent past?"

Scott glances between them in bewilderment. "So... ghosts actually exist?"

Allison laughs despite herself. "News flash, Scott: if you've heard of it somewhere, it probably exists. Think of any death that was extremely violent, or involved a lot of emotional pain. That stuff is like a skewer that pins spirits into the mortal world."

"Well, there is one thing," Scott says. "The Hale fire. I told you about it earlier, but that was almost eight years ago; long before this started happening."

Allison leans forward. "Tell us about it. Everything you know."

Scott sits down on the other bed, his eyes lidded as he drags up what's undoubtedly a painful past. "Eight people died in that fire; the police suspected arson, but they never found the people who did it, or came up with a motive."

"To be clear," Stiles interrupts. "When you say people, you do in fact mean werewolves, right?"

Allison shoots him a look. He shrugs and settles back into silence.

After a minute Scott continues. "The three survivors were Derek, Laura, and Peter—but we all thought Peter was in a coma, until a few years later. Turns out he was just biding his time until Laura came back to town; he killed her." Scott lapses into a broody silence. "He was the one who turned me. He wanted to form a pack, so he could go after the people that killed his family... I ended him before he got the chance." He looks up to Allison, like he's asking for some sort of forgiveness. She's heard this before, but Stiles hasn't, and his face stays hard. "He was killing people. I didn't have a choice."

"Scott," Allison says, "Is there any chance you burned Peter's body?"

Scott shakes his head. "I buried him, in the woods behind the house. Why?"

Allison rises to her feet and starts pacing. She can't sit still any longer—the thoughts are bouncing around from her brain to her body, vibrating her into motion. "This guy seems as good a candidate as any—violent death, unfinished business, and a body to burn. Even if he isn't our baddie, there's no way he's resting peacefully."

"So we ask him a few questions," Stiles suggests. "And then we torch him."

Allison nods. "That's the idea." She walks over to her chair and tugs her jacket off it. The weight of it on her shoulders is almost comforting, like armor holding her down. They have a direction now. Maybe even a solution.

"We'll take the Jeep," she says, tossing her hair and checking her weapons. "Load up on salt and iron. We'll take Kate along this time—we can't throw her off forever. Now that we know what this thing is, we have a chance in hell of fighting it. Stiles, you can drive—" When she turns to toss him the keys, he's looking at her oddly. She stops. "Stiles?"

He points at her arm. "What happened there?"

Glancing down, she sees the four slashes in the leather left there by Scott's claws. Shit. She had totally forgotten they were there.

"I thought you said Erica just ran away?" Stiles says. The anger hasn't crept into his voice yet, but Allison can hear it just below the surface. She grasps for some excuse or explanation, but "got caught in the door" isn't cutting it.

"It was my fault." Scott steps forward, and Allison's heart sinks. "I wasn't completely honest about earlier. Erica wasn't just dazed, she was violent—covered in blood. When I felt whatever was in Erica's mind, it came after me as well. For a minute, I lost control. Allison held me down while I got myself back together, but by then Erica had fought Derek off and fled."

Stiles glances between them, his eyes hard. "You two lied to me."

"It wasn't important," Allison says quickly. "Scott didn't know what he was doing, and neither did Erica. All that matters is that we all work together to stop whatever's doing this, before someone else gets hurt."

"So you're telling me that Scott nearly ripped your arm off, and you didn't think that was relevant information?" He stares between them in disbelief. "And Erica, covered in blood? She was involved in the most recent murder, wasn't she?"

"It wasn't her fault—"

"No, I don't care!" Stiles yells. "You just took it on faith that something forced Erica's hand, that Scott wasn't lying to save her ass and his own. And then, you turned around and lied to me about it!"

"Scott wouldn't just lose control like that!" Allison snaps. "I've seen how strong he is—the only time he so much as cracked was when he'd been taking a five minute hit of wolfsbane!"

"Hang on, hang on," Stiles says, and Allison instantly realizes her mistake. "Scott's lost control before this?"

"It was just for a minute," Allison says, all-too-aware of how deep she's dug herself. "The wolfsbane in Lydia's house, it got to his head—he snapped out of it after just a minute."

Stiles stares at her. "Then tell me this: were you in danger with him?"

"Stiles—"

"Yes or no."

The memory of being shoved against the wall, Scott's claws digging into her shoulders and his teeth just inches from her neck, fights its way into her mind. She could lie. But then again, she really couldn't. "Yes. I was."

Stiles turns to Scott. This whole time he's been standing against the wall, hunched over like he's being punched in the gut. "You're to blame for this. You knew you couldn't keep a lid on it, and you still let yourself be alone with her."

"It's not like that," Allison says sharply.

"No, he's right," Scott says quietly. "I should have taken the hint. I haven't lost control in years. I thought the first time was just a fluke. But if Lydia did it once, she can do it again."

“From the mouth of the man himself,” Stiles says. He spits each word like its burning his tongue.

Allison steps between them. Just five minutes ago everything had finally been heading in the right direction. She can't let it fall apart now. "We need him," she says. "He knows Peter, he knows this town."

"He's dangerous," Stiles shoots back. "Not only because of the whole werewolf thing, but because if Kate finds out about him she'll skin us all. Why do you care so much about keeping him around?"

"I don't!" Allison snarls. "Why do you care so much about getting rid of him?"

"Because you're not thinking straight, Allison! You're putting everything on the line for some guy you don't even know!" The bitterness in Stiles voice stings. "What, you think just because he has pretty eyes means he can't rip you apart, whether he wants to or not? He said so himself, he's murdered someone."

"Peter was a danger to everyone," Scott says, bristling. "Is it only acceptable for people to kill monsters if they're hunters? How many people have you killed?"

"None," Stiles shoots back. "But I've killed plenty of monsters."

"Why are you doing this?" Allison demands. "What the hell did Kate say to you?" Stiles stays resolutely silent, his jaw set. Allison laughs in spite of the fact that none of this is funny. “Kate’s messing with your head, can’t you see that? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

Stiles's eyes are an arrow right through her. “Maybe you could stand to learn a few things from her. Like when to pull a goddamn trigger.”

"What the hell does that mean?"

"No, you know what? I could handle this if it was just yourself you were endangering. I know you can take care of yourself. But you're dragging me into this as well, with your plans of always _talking_ to the monsters and asking about their feelings before we gank them, and splitting up at every possible opportunity just so Scott doesn't get outed. Well you know what? I don't feel like dying for that guy."

"Well, sorry that I don't feel comfortable with the possibility of killing innocent people," Allison shoots back. "Maybe you should have stuck with Kate. Seems like you two have more in common than you thought."

Stiles gasps with a sudden, sharp laugh, his head rolling with the motion of it. "God. You would say that. You with your precious training and your stupid rulebook on when to shoot to kill. You think the rest of us got a choice?"

“What, you think I had it easier?”

“Of course you did, Allison!” Stiles springs to his feet. There's something on his face Allison has never seen before, and can't even label. Deeper than anger. “You were born into this life. You and your whole family are like the goddamn Avengers of hunting, with your high tech gear and your centuries of lore. And you know what?” He takes a step forward. “You have no idea what it’s like to be thrown into this life completely blind, to have no idea what you’re doing, or even why you’re doing it—to have people you love ripped away without understanding why. Snipers get to pick their targets—down in the mud, it’s kill or be killed.”

It takes Allison a while to find her voice, boiling under the anger of Stiles's glare. She can't remember seeing him like this, not in all the years they've been together. "Well it shouldn't be that way," she manages at last. "We all have to try, at least, to distinguish between good and bad—if we start killing without reservation we're no better than the things we put down." She leans forward. "We're not murderers, Stiles."

Stiles laughs, a harsh, painful sound. "Define murder. We’re killers either way."

Allison squares her shoulders. "I'm not cutting Scott out of this investigation."

Stiles shrugs. The fury he had unleashed just a minute before had retreated back under the surface, lava cooling back into rock. In its place was that old familiar bitterness Allison was seeing so much of lately. "Fine," he says, holding out his arms. "Do what you want, Allison. Just do what you fucking want."

With that, he turns and makes for the door. "Where are you going?" Allison yells at his back. "You said we shouldn't split up!"

"I also said we shouldn't climb in bed with monsters. Clearly my vote doesn't matter." The door swings shut behind him, a period where it should be an exclamation mark. Anger settles into the bottom of Allison's stomach like silt in a pond.

 

 

 

It takes about two minutes of Stiles bracing his back against a vending machine before he can get his heart to stop pounding. This was something different than anger, and he'd felt plenty of that. This was something painful, dipping into righteousness, skirting the edge of betrayal. When he'd walked in to see Allison and Scott standing there for a second he'd been absolutely positive that Kate was right, ready to ask if they had even gone after Erica at all. That was the paranoia talking. He got that way sometimes. But a little helping of paranoia never hurt in this line of work, and he'd been going through his memory of every time Allison had been in the same room as Scott, and well. He hadn’t seen her trust anyone else like that in a long time. And that was a problem.

He presses his palms to the cool glass and tries to pull it into himself. Like it'll make him calmer. Like it'll make him forget. With a sigh that's more of a snarl, he pushes off and walks towards the parking lot, with no particular destination in mind other than "elsewhere". He's not leaving them behind. He doesn't trust them that much.

Off on the other side of the parking lot, he sees Kate leaning on the hood of her car, a phone still cradled between her ear and shoulder. Stiles's laptop is still balanced precariously on one of her knees as she squints against the sunlight. Without thinking too much about why, Stiles wanders towards her.

"Yes, I'm still here," Kate says, a note of irritation in her voice. "Are you finding anything on those names?" A pause. "Oh come on old man, get a pair of reading glasses or something." Another pause. Suddenly Kate's face is much more apologetic. "Right. No. Yeah, no. Sorry. Thank you. I really, deeply appreciate it. Oh come on Singer, do it for me. You got all the names? Yeah, I'll hold. Don't you dare hang up on me."

She looks up to see Stiles standing a few feet away. She smiles. "What's up, Snow White?" she asks.

"Just checking in," Stiles says mechanically. Kate holds up a finger and her eyes shift into space as she listens to something from the other end of her phone. "All five? Yeah, I remember them. Bobby, you're a genius. Yeah, yeah, you hate me, I know. Ciao." She hangs up the phone with a look of success. "Well, you'll never guess."

"I don't have to. You're gonna tell me in five seconds anyways," Stiles says, leaning against the side of the car.

Kate shrugs. "True enough. Turns out Victor wasn't the only hunter that bit it in this town. There were eight other before you guys got here, and they all died bloody or disappeared. Some of them weren't ever reported as missing, but my contact has it on good info that they were last seen gunning for here."

"Do you think that means anything?" Stiles asks.

"It means that eight hunters have been here before us, and all died," Kate says grimly. "It means we have to do better than them." She shakes her head. "It's more than that, though. These were tactical strikes, carried out just a day or so after the hunters hit town, sometimes even the same night. Civilian deaths petered off since the first burst of them, but after every lull there's another murder."

Stiles nods. "Like a cycle."

Kate bobs her head. "Something like that. Either way, it's another lead."

"Hang on," Stiles says. "If hunters are getting picked off, why have the three of us made it so long?"

"You tell me, babycakes. Hopefully we can figure that out." She squints at him. "You alright? You're looking a bit... off. Not that I'm in the business of caring."

Stiles shrugs. "Allison and I had another disagreement. It's no big deal."

Kate pauses. She tilts her head in a way that makes Stiles think she's giving this much more thought than he would prefer. "But it is, isn't it? She wants to do something stupid. I know my niece. When she gets difficult it's never over anything good." When Stiles isn't forthcoming, she grabs a fistful of his shirt and hauls her onto the hood of the car beside her. He lets himself be pulled.

“Come on,” she says with a grin. “You can tell me. Maybe I can help. Allison's like a sister to me.”

God, this is so stupid. "I don't trust Scott," he says with a shrug. "She does. That's really it."

Kate grins. "Little love triangle you guys have going on?"

"No! No, that's not it. Me and Allison, we're—" Kate's laughter cuts him off. He reigns himself back in. "I just don't think Allison has her priorities straight. She's lost her focus.”

Kate stares at him shrewdly. For once around her he's not worried that he's said too much; he just wants her to understand. “Look,” Kate says, patting him on the back, “I may not have been here very long, but I know there's something fishy going on around here. You and Allison, you're keeping something from me. I'm sure you have your reasons, or that you think you do, but trust me when I say that as soon as you start making things complicated, more people are gonna get hurt. That's the way it happens, every time. The only way to stop it is at the source—find what's not human, and burn it.” She leans back, staring into the distance. “I've done some stuff that would haunt some people. But I can sleep at night because I know it's always been for the sake of others. That if I hadn't done it, something worse would happen. Maybe in a year, maybe in a week. But it _will_ happen. With monsters, it always does. And that's my wisdom for the day, kid,” she says, planting a finger in his chest with a serious expression. “So you tell me—is my niece gonna do what she has to do?”

And here it is. If he tells Kate why he's worried, she'll sic herself on Scott and his pack. If he holds back, Allison could get herself hurt. And in the end, who did he really care about?

He takes a breath. "Look. There's something you should know about Scott."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The theme for today's update is "Surprise, bitch. Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me." In other words, I am incredibly sorry for the giant and suspiciously-semester-sized gap in the updates. This has been a really rough term (hello, thesis) and I ended up having little to no time or energy to devote to such a giant piece that I've already invested so much into. I really appreciate you guys being so patient with me.
> 
> Anyways, that's the bad news. The good news is that the semester is now over and I will have a lot more free time on my hands! The bad news part 2 is that, as I have mentioned before, this story has changed a ton since I began posting (despite my careful plans of having everything finished by the time I posted chapter 1) and so I'm pretty much going to be re-writing the entire next chapter. The good news part 2 is that it's gonna be a lot better than what I had before. It will just take a little longer. Though not as long as this as this one took, for sure!
> 
> Stay awesome, guys. I'll see you next update.


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